


(Im)perfection During Intimacy

by cereal



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Pete's World, five times fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-24
Updated: 2014-04-29
Packaged: 2018-01-20 14:29:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1513898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cereal/pseuds/cereal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You gonna get there?" (Five times sex wasn't perfect in Pete's World, and one time it was.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> These are all written to be stand-alones, but around that five times theme. Predictably, the rating stays consistent throughout.

It was supposed to be a consulting position.

The Doctor and Rose Tyler defending the Earth on a come-as-you-please schedule (or, more accurately: a "come help, please" schedule), no time cards, no contracts, no paperwork, no thank you.

Instead it turns into them in the office more often than not, six floors between R&D and the field agents, six floors between the Doctor and Rose, plenty of paperwork and framed pictures on their desks.

It's not bad, all told, the Doctor wears a tie to work, even if he doesn't at home, not anymore, and Rose plays her part nicely, field dress sometimes and, other times, button-down blouses that strain across her breasts, the Doctor wiggling his fingers in the gaps on long lift rides.

It was clear from the beginning though, that the rules that apply to other employees wouldn't -- _couldn't_ \-- apply to them. Torchwood would take them in an inter-office relationship or they wouldn't take them at all.

Still, those finger-wiggling lift rides aside, they try to maintain some sense of propriety, most of the time.

(If only because every inch of the place is covered by at least two cameras. There are some things you don't want your boss to see, and some things you don't want your dad to see, and where they overlap is sex.)

If the Doctor's got his tongue down Rose's throat after a dangerous mission, well, they wouldn't be the first employees to fall victim to that kind of adrenaline. If any of the field agents, at least, complain, she's been quietly amassing plenty of pictures on her phone to retaliate with.

(Jake especially wouldn't dare -- Tony had found the "Blackmail: Jake" photo roll during an Angry Birds game gone astray and Jake still can't look Rose's mum in the eye.)

But, really, they try to keep it out of the office.

And if the office happens to be only a 10 minute walk from their flat, and if Rose absolutely hates Taco Tuesdays in the lunchroom, and if she goes home to eat instead that day, well, it's not like she was _planning_ for the Doctor to join her.

He loves Taco Tuesday, after all.

But the flat isn't the office, and just because she _wasn't_ planning it, doesn't mean she _isn't_ planning it now, stretched out on the sofa in her work clothes, picking at a bowl of dry Weetabix with her fingers at noon.

So she texts him.

_**Eating a bowl of cereal at home for lunch. Anything at home you'd like to eat?** _

The little dots come up, indicating the Doctor's typing back, and her phone vibrates a moment later.

_**No, thanks. Finished off the biscuits last night. Besides, it's Taco Tuesday!** _

She bites at her lip. Too vague, then.

_**Really? *Nothing* at home for you to eat? Nothing that could possibly tempt your tongue?** _

The typing dots appear and then disappear a few times, and she can practically see the wheels turning in his head nearly a mile away.

She types again.

_**May I remind you, Doctor, that I just said I was at home.** _

There's no response, no typing status, nothing, and she shrugs to herself as she goes back to her Weetabix. Maybe he's in the middle of something.

She finishes the bowl, swapping it for her laptop from the coffee table and starts to navigate to the Harrod's website. She'd lost a blazer to an (educational) explosion last week, and she wants to replace it. And to see about having the Doctor take over Tony's science fair project, because she's clearly not remembering her combustibles well enough.

One more text wouldn't do any harm though, right? Just a little tease for tonight after work.

She snags her phone again -- _**All right, enjoy your tacos and the knowledge that I've ruined a perfectly good pair of knickers for nothing xxxx**_ \-- but before she can send it, there's a key in the lock and the knob is turning.

The Doctor's rushes into the flat, still wearing his lab coat, Torchwood badge flapping from the pocket, and a dopey grin on his face as he shuts the door behind himself. There are times when he's properly seductive, all dark and rumble-y and sexy, and then there's this -- she knows he _thinks_ this is the same grin, the same suave, fuckable smirk, but it's not, and it never fails to make her laugh.

"What?" he says, sounding wounded.

"Nothing," she says, laughter tapering off as she pulls him in by the lapels. "Just glad you finally figured it out."

He stands up straight, squaring his shoulders. "I'll have you know, Rose Tyler, that I am a master of subtext. An absolute savant."

She smooths her hands down from his lapels to his abdomen, skimming lower until she's got her hands on the button of his trousers.

"And does the master of subtext have time for this?" she asks.

He nods enthusiastically, arching his hips up into her hands. "36 minutes 'til my next meeting, plenty of time."

"Well then, Doctor, let's go beat the clock," and with that, she darts away from him toward the bedroom, fingers flying across the buttons of her shirt as she moves.

He joins her in the room a moment later, she's got her shirt off, standing in her bra, and the Doctor moves to help her with her jeans.

"No, no, they're pretty tight," she says. "I'll get them, you work on that," she gestures to his outfit.

He strips down to his boxer briefs -- black today, a Rose Tyler purchase and a Rose Tyler favorite -- and grabs her by the hips when she's down to knickers and bra. He maneuvers her backward to the bed and lifts her into a small hop to the edge of the mattress.

She scoots further up the bed, expecting him to follow her, but instead he stays standing, reaching down to grab the waistband of her knickers and tug them off.

He darts his head for a quick, deep kiss to her mouth, bracing himself on his arms above her, and she's barely got a second to greet his tongue with her own before he's shimmying back down to position his head between her legs.

"This doesn't seem like a good use of your limited time, Doctor," she says, hands moving to settle in his hair despite her words.

"Oh, Rose, this is the _best_ use of my time. Besides, you know how good I am at it, it’ll be quick,” he says.

"And not half humble, too," she says, the words biting off as his tongue presses to her clit. "Oh, fuck, fine."

He pulls back abruptly. "Not until you say it."

She rolls her eyes with an indulgent smile. "Yes, Doctor, you're the absolute tits at time management."

It's not what he wanted, she knows, but he gives her a long wet lick anyway. "Try again," he says, the warmth of his breath ghosting her entrance as he looks up at her across the expanse of her torso.

"Yes, yes," she says, rolling her hips closer to his mouth and making a noise of frustration when he dodges her.

"Ah-ah."

"Come on,” she pleads, “you know you're good at this."

"Good?" he asks, raising his eyebrows.

“ _Brilliant_. Happy?"

"That's a good girl, Rose Tyler," and his mouth is finally firmly in place.

He _is_ brilliant at it, his tongue moving to dip inside of her in long, slow strokes, lapping at her wetly, before he's moving to tap out the rhythm on her clit that's almost always her undoing.

It feels great, and she's enjoying it, encouraging, breathy noises, fuck, god, yes, but what she'd been thinking of on the couch with her Weetabix -- despite what she'd actually texted -- was a quick, hard fuck to lead into her afternoon rundown, and after a few more tries, every bit of dirty talk she can think of zipping through her head, she gives up on trying to come like this.

Instead she moves her hands to the sides of the Doctor's head, tugging him back with her fingers curled around his ears. He resists for a moment, mumbling 'Mm-mm' against her, but she persists and he gives in, pulling back from her with a wet noise.

"Do you want to fuck me?" she says, stretching her arms up over her head.

"Oh, yes," and then he's stripping off his pants, pushing himself up the mattress to loom over her, cradling his hips in her own as he kisses her.

He's hard against her, but not as hard as he could be, not as hard as he usually is, but maybe he'd cooled off going down on her. She moves her hand between their bodies, stroking him until he's harder, while working her tongue against his in lazy, slow movements.

When he's hard enough for her liking, she positions him at her entrance and he pushes into her with a hiss. Above her, she watches as his eyes dart to the bedside table, and the alarm clock on top of it.

"Good?" she asks.

He nods and begins to move.

She _had_ been thinking about it earlier, and his mouth had helped things along, so when he switches from the longer, gentle strokes with kissing they usually favor at the beginning to the short, hard thrusts with licking and biting and sucking that bring him down close to her, braced on his forearms curled under her back, she's already close. 

It's the perfect angle for friction against her clit in just the right rhythm and, combined with the feeling of his mouth on her neck, the hand he's moved up to curl in the back of her hair, she's soon keening underneath him.

"Right there, right there, right there, oh god, right there, don't stop," she's pleading with him, hands slipping and grasping across his back, down to his arse, her hips meeting him in the stuttering rhythm.

He pushes forward, driving into her a little rougher, growling, pleased noises rumbling across her skin, and he's encouraging her, "Yeah, yeah, that's it, come on, oh, yes, fuck, yes,” and then she's coming beneath him with a long, loud moan. 

It was a good one, and she's still tingling, but that moan, at that volume, had been for him, and the way she moves her hands between them to rake her nails down his chest is for him, too. She's clenching around his cock as much as she can, trotting out every trick in their own personal book to try and get him there, too, and quick. 

“That feels great," she says, arching into him, a hand in his hair now and tugging. "Wanted this, was thinking about you, your cock, yes, like that, god, yes.”

There's not even any indication he's heard her, he's just chasing his orgasm with determination, and she wonders what he thinks about in moments like this. She's confident enough to know it's about her, whatever it is -- and that's as it should be, she thinks about him even when she's with him -- but if he'd tell her, maybe she could say it, or do it.

She's just about ready to fall back on the old favorites again when he's pulling out of her, and flipping her over, guiding her to rise to her hands and knees and then pushing into her from behind.

He chases into his rhythm so quickly that she's confident he's going to come soon, his hands sliding up and down her back, over the curve of her hips, before pulling back to give her a slap across the arse, the noise echoing in the room and the sting making her feel like maybe she can get there again. 

She begins to rock her hips back to meet him, pushing herself back to take some of the effort off of him. He's silent behind her, only the occasional breath (and his cock inside her, his hands on her skin) drawing attention to the fact that he's there.

With a tone as gentle as she can manage while being roughly fucked, she turns her head to look at him over her shoulder.

"You gonna get there?"

He shrugs, looking frustrated. "I'm just tired, I didn't eat anything yet today," he says, his eyes skittering back to the alarm clock, but he doesn't stop driving into her, doesn't pull out, and she turns her head back, trying to focus on helping him along.

It's good for several long moments, and she picks back up with the noises, they're not artificial, she means them, but she's drawing them out, trying to encourage him, telling him how wet she is, how much she loves him like this, everything she can think of before trying to give him an out.

She turns her head again. "We can stop if you want," she says.

He keeps fucking her, changing the angle, and just like that, she's on the cusp again, "No, no, no, no, wait, don't stop, don't stop," she drops down from her hands to her forearms, pressing up into him, and he's pushing into her just right, and she comes again, softer, but buzzing still as it waves through her. 

This time, he does slow, his hips breaking their rhythm and then he's pulling out of her.

"Sorry," he mumbles, and he _does_ look exhausted, and hungry.

"No, no, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have made you do that," she says, and the guilt she feels, alongside the embarrassment, is itching to burn through her veins. 

He pushes off the bed, reaching for his pants. "You didn't make me do anything," he says. "I had fun."

She gives him a look.

"What? I did!"

Moving off the bed, she joins him in picking up their discarded clothes. "But you didn't come."

"I'm a big boy, Rose. I don't always have to come to enjoy myself."

She steps into her knickers, tugging them up. "Well, yeah, but...I don't know. I like it when you do."

He laughs, taking the few steps across the carpeting to meet her. "I like it when you do, too. And you do it so spectacularly," he says, dropping a kiss on her mouth, and then her forehead. "We'll give it our best tonight, yeah?"

She nods, placated for now, and they dress quickly. 

They leave the flat together, walking back to the office in the sunlight, and she knows she should let it go, it's not like it's the first time only one of them has come, but she just...she feels guilty. 

And maybe a little bit frustrated with him, but she'd never let on.

"Was it just the being tired? And hungry? Or was it -- you know -- the _pressure_? The time crunch, I mean?"

He shrugs one shoulder, eyes flicking from her to the sidewalk to the buildings and back again.

"I guess it was the -- the time, too. I guess."

Rose nods. She should've expected -- performing under pressure in life or death situations is one thing. In the bedroom, it probably makes for, well...performance anxiety. 

"We don't have to have quickies on lunch anymore," she says, and tries to keep the resignation from her voice.

He stops walking, flat out. "What?"

"Well, just, you know, the clock ticking and all that. We don't have to try that anymore."

"Rose Tyler, I do not like where this conversation's gone. One time, can't a bloke forget his breakfast banana and worry about a meeting _one_ time?"

The mortification in Rose's veins fizzles away, and she grins at him. "All right, all right. I'm being dramatic."

He nods, satisfied, taking her hand as he begins walking again.

When they reach the doors to Torchwood, he moves to unlink their hands, but she tugs him back toward her.

"Friday," she says. "I'm wide open on Friday."

He looks puzzled for a minute, but then smiles. “Ah, me, too."

"Say 12:15, then?" 

"Yep, I'll pencil it in."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spend enough time in offices like that and a bloke gets to thinking, thinking about the structural integrity of the objects in the office, of the things that could happen on those objects, even if it’s a lazy, un-targeted sort of thinking.

It was supposed to be exciting. They have jobs, _lives_ , really, that lead them into danger regularly — life and death situations, the fate of the universe, Jackie Tyler’s cooking — all of it high stakes, all of the time.

So to have a mission like this, with so many formalities, building checks for the sake of protocol, and not crisis, it’s sort of a blessing.

And pairing him up with Rose, that’s a blessing, too, and a given.

Pete had sent them on their way with an apologetic wave. They know where the alien is, they know how to stop him, and they know neither of those things are in these abandoned offices, but for the sake of bureaucracy, they’re having to investigate them anyway. Due diligence before Jake’s team can go charging into the real location at 0900 hours tomorrow morning.

It’s still evening now, the sun just beginning to set, the start of magic hour, he tells Rose as they stride across the office park into the last squat, deteriorating building. The very best time for Hollywood’s finest to roll their cameras.

“What do you think, Rose? Fancy me a movie star?”

Rose bumps his shoulder with her own. “You? Nah, you’ve got a face for radio.”

He preens on reflex, and then her words sink in. “Oi!”

She winks at him and takes off sprinting into the building, the glass doors squeaking on their hinges as she pushes by them.

He follows at an easy pace, reaching the doors just as they’re settling back into their closed positions and pulling them open once more. The building’s only got three floors, the first is more of an extended lobby space, and he can’t see Rose anywhere.

At that same leisurely speed, he walks the area, he’s not in a rush to find Rose, she can handle herself, and — if he’s honest — he may, _perhaps_ , be using the time to think up a particularly good comeback.

He checks behind the security desk, around a few long-dead potted plants, tossing around potential bon mots in his head. Radio, radio, radio, he taps his tongue against the front of his teeth in time to the word.

Above him, there’s the pounding of Rose running across the floor.

All right then, second level it is. He’ll make her wait though, buy himself some more time by taking the lift.

Face for radio, a face for — he jabs at the lift button, eyes glancing around the room for inspiration. The dial for the heating system is next to the lift and he thinks there might be something there. Radio dial, face for radio.

If Rose asks, and she will, of course, she’ll be too dazzled by his witty repartee not to ask, he’s going to say the _ding_ of the lift opening was perfectly timed to the bolt of inspiration.

It’s a few seconds off, in reality, and he’s already on the lift, trundling toward the second floor when it hits him.

_If he’s got a face for radio, she turns the dial._

Take that, Rose Tyler.

Or, wait, if it’s his face, does that imply that the dial is his _nose_? Maybe in his last body, not this one. The dial he wants her to turn, or stroke, or suck, in this body is much lower. Well, the last body’s lower dial, too, but he’s in this one now, and he’s looking out for it.

The lift completes its journey, but instead of a brilliant entrance for his stunning banter, he’s greeted by the sound of Rose’s boots above him once more, and he ducks back into the lift, heading to the top floor.

When the lift opens this time, it’s to a set of what were probably executive offices. Directly in front of him, double doors are swung wide to an office with a big, vintage-looking desk.

Rose is sitting in a rickety-looking guest chair in front of it, her feet kicked up on top of the desk.

“I checked everywhere, Doctor,” she says over her shoulder, and then turning her head to follow him as walks around the back of the desk. “All clear, London can sleep safe knowing the aliens were definitely not where we knew they’re weren’t.”

He’s sure that made tenuous sense, at best, even if he were paying attention, but he’s not, because this desk — this desk looks exactly like one from lifetimes ago, from when he wore that silly cape and was stuck in that silly office, on that silly exile.

Spend enough time in offices like that and a bloke gets to thinking, thinking about the structural integrity of the objects in the office, of the things that could happen on those objects, even if it’s a lazy, un-targeted sort of thinking.

There’s nothing lazy or un-targeted about what he’s thinking now, it’s very action-based, and very specific to Rose in front of him, right now.

“What’s going on?” Rose asks, dropping her feet down from the desk, but making no move to rise from the chair. “Your face did that whole —” she waves her hand in the air, in the direction of his face — “ _thinking_ thing.

“If it’s about dinner, you know we already decided on pizza. No take-backs. I don’t care how fun you think it is to say, we can’t eat quinoa for dinner every night.”

Instead of answering her, he leans back on his heels, taking in the wide expanse of the desk, reaching a hand to the edge and shaking it on its legs. Seems sturdy enough. He bends down, blowing a small cloud of dust from the top. Well, that’s not a deal-breaker. More dust than that in their flat sometimes, unless Jackie’s coming round.

With that settled, he turns to Rose. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Rose stands, coming around the back of the desk to stand in front of him before repeating his checks on the desk. Sturdy, yep. Dusty, but livable.

“I think I am,” she says. “But could we just get a truck this weekend? I don’t feel much like moving it now.”

He’d started on his shirt buttons while Rose was going through her inspection and he stops short at her words just after finishing the last one.

“What?” he says, turning to look at her.

“What?” she says, her eyes falling to his open button-down, the white t-shirt underneath it.

“Wait, what are _you_ thinking?”

Rose turns backs to the desk, running reverent fingertips over the top of it through the dust.  “That this would look gorgeous in the office. See the color? That matches the baseboards perfectly.”

He sputters. “The _baseboards_?”

She nods. “Yeah, baseboards, the things at the bottom of the wall? I know we’re renting still, but we’ll probably buy something someday —”

He opens his mouth to protest, but she holds up a hand to stop him.

“— no, no, don’t get all weird about it, I’m not saying we have to do it now, or even in a year, sometimes a desk is just a desk, Doctor.”

It’s…he doesn’t even know what this is. He’ll buy her 14 desks, and steal this one for her, too, but that is _not_ what he was thinking.

She seems to notice his hesitation, turning to face him more fully and speculatively eyeing his open shirt again. “Wait, what were _you_ thinking?”

“I, Rose Tyler, was thinking just because we decided not to shag in _our_ offices, doesn’t mean we can’t do it _other_ offices, _vacated_ offices.”

Rose shakes her slightly, as if she’s trying to focus, to clear her head and see where he’s coming from. (Which, hopefully, is on that desk — or against it — in short order.)

“You want to — shag? Here?”

Her tone is confused and sort of neutral, as if _he_ were the one suggesting acquiring furniture, not an exciting, public…ish shag.

He nods slowly, stepping closer to her in a deliberate way, smoothing his hand down her back to land on her bum.

“Oh,” she says, “you’re — you’re serious.”

He feels his face twist up, eyes squinting at her as he retreats from the step he had taken toward her, hand leaving her bum. “Why, don’t you want to?”

She looks at the desk again, and then back at him, considering. “Hadn’t really thought about it.”

It’s not that they don’t speak frankly about sex, they do. He picks up her birth control from the clinic sometimes, and she can spot the difference between a morning erection he wants to do something with, and a morning erection he wants to sleep five more minutes through, a mile away.

They can shag through rumbling stomachs, laugh when one of them says something particularly ridiculous, and take breaks in the middle for Rose to pee, but there’s something to be said for seduction, and the element of surprise and this — this is not going at all the way he expected.

“Well, we don’t have to, I just thought, you know,” he waves his hand in the air, gesturing to the empty room, “empty office, the thrill of it.

"We don’t have to,” he repeats.

She tilts her face to look at him. “No, no, we can,” she says, as if she’s discussing extra cheese on tonight’s pizza, like she’s indulging him, but not particularly keen herself.

“Don’t do me any favors,” he says, and he can’t keep the petulant tone from creeping into his voice.

She waves him off. “No, I want to, here, look,” she says, and hops up onto the desk, a small cloud of dust billowing in her wake.

Spreading her legs, she tugs him forward by his undershirt, positioning him to stand between her thighs.

“There, see?” she says, tipping her face up to kiss him.

It still feels a little bit like pity, or like she’s giving in just because he asked, but just a couple of weeks ago, he’d let her talk him into a shag at 3 in the morning, when she’d woken up amorous and he’d been dead asleep, and maybe this is what relationships like this are — sometimes you just go along with it.

And, anyway, he’s sure she’ll come around fully soon.

With a mental shrug, he kisses her back, right into it with tongues and teeth, as his hands begin to roam across her jumper. It’s a bit chilly in here, winter still making its mark on the burgeoning springtime, and he’ll probably leave her jumper on, and most of his own clothes, but as he slips his hand under the fabric to meet her skin, he figures they’ll make do.

Rose is amenable, enthusiastic even, when his hand cups her breast over her bra, thumb edging beneath the underwire to stroke at the soft skin there. He pulls his mouth from hers, dropping it to suck and lick at her neck as she flexes her hips into him, legs winding around the backs of his thighs to press his erection against her.

He’s been half-hard since he saw the desk and had this idea, and Rose in front of him has hardened him fully, and she makes a pleased little noise somewhere in his hair when she feels him.

Pulling back from her, he moves his hands to the button of his trousers, undoing that and the zip before shifting his trousers and pants down over his cock.

Rose grasps him lightly, stroking him along, rubbing her thumb against the drops of moisture that had begun to dampen the front of his pants. He shifts her hands away gently and then brings his own to the button of her jeans.

She helps him along, arching her hips when he steps away, so he can get her knickers and jeans down to her knees. When he goes to step forward again, he’s hampered by the material stretched between her legs, and in a move he couldn’t possibly make suave, not with his cock bobbing like it is and all the dust floating around, he squats down to peel both her knickers and jeans down to her ankles.

There’s just enough space now for him to get where he needs to be, and when he steps back between her legs, his hand moves down to her entrance.

She’s…dry. Well, mostly dry, and he feels a flash of guilt, and then one of irritation, if she hadn’t wanted to go along with this, she could’ve just said.

“You really weren’t thinking about this, were you?”

She shakes her head where it’s dropped against his shoulder. “No, but I am now, just give me a minute.”

He strokes her lightly, his middle finger dipping inside her to help spread the moisture that’s beginning to gather there. After a moment, he pulls back. “I can…” he trails off, moving to squat down, indicating he can use his mouth, but she fits her hands in his hair, tugging him back up to kiss her lips.

“It’s fine, I’ll be good, just keep doing that,” she says, arching her hips against where his fingers are working.

He kisses her again, pushing his tongue into her mouth in a counter rhythm to what his fingers are doing inside of her.

It takes a few moments, his mouth returning to her neck for those deep, sucking kisses she favors at the skin there, but she dampens beneath his hand, his fingers sliding in and out of her with ease now.

Pulling his hand away, he moves to position his cock, but the angles are wrong. He grabs her by the hips, tugging her forward to tilt her toward him, and then he's nearly rutting against her, trying to find her entrance while his hands continue to stabilize her by the hips.

A few haphazard thrusts and realignments and he thinks he's got it, pushing forward with more force.

Rose squeals away from him. "Wrong one, wrong one," and he realizes what she meant, where exactly this angle had him trying to push his way into.

There's a bolt of aggravation slicing through him. Surely this shouldn't be this hard, they've done this plenty of times, why can't they just up and shag in an abandoned office like they do in the movies? It _is_ magic hour after all.

"Sorry," he mumbles and Rose smooths a hand through his hair.

"It's fine, I'll help, here," she says, dropping her free hand to wrap around his erection and guiding him into place.

He slides into her slowly, trying to take his time. This newest angle means he really can't let go of her hips, he's stabilizing her like this, his hands curling into her waist underneath her jumper.

There's not much range, not with the precarious angle of her hips and the way he's slightly stooped down, but he begins to move.

Rose, his brilliant, wonderful Rose, catches on to his predicament, dropping a hand down to rub her clit the way he normally would in this position.

She's lowering her fingers periodically, catching the base of his cock as he pulls out of her, and it feels great, but it's not quite perfect.

It's like he's not getting deep enough, and he's worried about keeping her braced against him, a groan of frustration rumbling through him when he should be groaning for entirely different reasons, and Rose shifts again.

Moving her hands away, she puts them out behind herself, bracing on her own arms and taking her weight off of him.

From this position, she can wrap her legs around him, heels pressing right below his bum as he angles over her.

He tries again, picking up the motions of his hips slowly, his thumb circling Rose's clit, his other hand palming her breast.

She's leaned back too far for him to be able to reach her mouth, so she puts it to different use, breathing out pleased noises, but muted, both of them in silent agreement that they shouldn't be too loud, even if the offices are abandoned. The last thing they need is Pete getting reports of shouting from the location of their last check-in.

Her moans, while quiet, do seem to be escalating though, and he works her clit with a firmer touch, complementing the slide of his cock as he thrusts in and out of her.

"Does this work?" he breathes, catching her eye.

She nods and then screws her eyes shut, concentrating, and he doesn't let his rhythm falter even as his leg starts to cramp.

"It's good, it's good," she says through clenched teeth, taking her weight on one arm and wrenching her other hand to land on top of his where he's rubbing against her.

She forces his hand down harder, showing him what she needs, her eyes still shut tight.

The office is quiet except for their breathing, the wet slide of his cock entering her over and over again, a few moments later, her body is tensing, muscles straining as she tries to tumble into it.

"Yeah, yeah, that's it, oh, Rose, you're perfect, that's it, you've got it," he's mumbling. He's stopped focusing on himself, it's not going to happen, not quite like this, but if he can just get Rose to come, it'll help, it always helps. 

With a low moan from the back of her throat, she gives in, her body continuing to tense around him, but it's over so quickly, her breathing slowing, a happy smile flitting across her face.

"Was that --?" he trails off.

She smiles at him, and nods. "Just a little one, it was nice though."

Nice.

It was _nice_.

He's blanketed in a wave of emotion. None of this is like it's supposed to be, they're supposed to be in the prime of their relationship, madly in love and shagging at every turn. And they are, and they do, but sometimes it seems like so much work, like every bloody random thought he had about humans was viewed through rose-colored (and Rose-colored) glasses, and the meeting of expectation and reality, while sometimes brilliant, can occasionally -- very occasionally -- be a letdown. 

It's not intentional, but he's stopped thrusting into her, and Rose looks up at him kindly. Somehow that almost makes it worse, she's so understanding, about everything, letting him find his way, following him more often than not, and he just -- why isn't this _easy_?

Before he can tell what Rose is about, she's shifting away from him, nudging him forward and propelling him back into one of the chairs flanking the front of the desk. It's a little bit hilarious, both of them walking around with their trousers down, waddling awkwardly, but then Rose is bending to grab her jeans and tug them up and he feels a wave of resignation overtake.

That's that, then.

He moves to rise from the chair, and Rose shakes her head, keeping him in place with a hand on his shoulder.

"Let me do this," she says, when she finishes buttoning her jeans back up. And then she's kneeling between his legs and pressing a dainty kiss to the tip of his cock before engulfing it fully. 

He sucks in a breath, startled at how quickly things have changed, and he feels Rose grin around him. Emotion washes over him once more, but this time it's a feeling of gratefulness, and -- when Rose picks up one of his hands, moving it to her head to rest in her hair -- arousal, too. 

She sucks him at him deeply, long, wet sucks that have him rutting against her mouth, trying to restrain the motion of his hips and keep from gagging her. She keeps taking him deeper though, until his cock is brushing the back of her throat on every few passes.

When she worms a hand up to cup his balls, he nearly comes apart right there, arching into her with a groan as she uses her free hand to anchor him back down to the chair.

Working in tandem with her mouth, her hand caresses him, dipping behind to brush a light finger there every so often, and he's lost all track of his surroundings, he's going to come, and he's going to come soon.

She starts making encouraging noises in the back of her throat, pleased little things that sound like she's enjoying herself, too, the vibrations rumbling across her tongue as she laps at him. 

A few, long tense seconds pass, and he's close, he's so close, just a little bit more, just a little, little bit, and suddenly Rose's hand moves from his balls to grasp the base of his cock, tightening firmly around him as her mouth sucks at the tip, and he buckles with a groan, releasing into her mouth. She works him through it, a light, pulsing rhythm to match his own and then she's pulling back, licking at her bottom lip and grinning at him proudly. 

"You are so good at that," he blurts out, and then his eyes dart away, embarrassed.

She laughs, ducking back into his line of vision. 

"You're right," she says with a wink. "I am. Now let's go home and see where I'm gonna put this desk."  
  



	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s pouring out of her like poison, dripping, black vitriol that she can’t seem to stop, and when he nods quietly, like a kicked puppy, she feels her ire flare even further.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [gallifreyburning](http://tmblr.co/mNZe3nGbU3gCP9RrfUSemMQ), who read this over and provided super helpful feedback! I think it's an unsettling chapter, but that was intentional, for the purposes of this 5 Times exercise, and what I set out to do with it -- i.e. make it more like a real life, long-term relationship -- but still: heads up!

It was supposed to be a happy reunion.

She’d been gone for nearly two weeks, a full twelve days away from the Doctor, time zones and jet lag and recycled zeppelin air. The team had barely stayed in one place long enough to eat, let alone long enough for her to talk to the Doctor regularly.

Instead it had been middle-of-the-night texts, a Skype call from the corner of a temporary headquarters, and at least a dozen _sorry I missed you_ voicemails making up their meager communication.

They hadn’t had time to talk about anything personal, the mundanities of their days or what they had for breakfast or how the bloody weather was, and there wasn’t time to talk about anything professional, either. He’d stayed back because he was the only one that could communicate with the Klunidian youngling, and now she doesn’t even know if the little guy had made it back home, or if he was still at Torchwood, or if Roald Dahl Plass had gone up in flames at his many hands.

Not that she wouldn’t have welcomed that at this point, even if she doesn’t _really_ mean it. She just -- she missed the Doctor, and she missed being home, she missed downtime and regular showers and not having a perpetual ache all over her body.

The mission’s not even _over_ yet, there’s so much work left to be done when the team gets back, and she’s only home now because she insisted on it -- and paid for the commercial flight. The Torchwood fleet is still back in Germany, waiting for the rest of her team to finish the debrief with the locals.

And what bloody locals they were, the same in every city, fighting them at every turn, as if Torchwood made a game of upending people’s lives. There had been so much red tape to cut through, so much sniping, and passive aggression, and aggressive aggression, and if one more local came back with coffee for his team and not hers, she was going to personally buy every single coffee bean in a hundred mile radius and not share a single ground.

Her coworkers, too, weren’t much of a laugh in such close quarters. Jake and his ability to sleep -- and snore -- anywhere. Pete and his politicking and diplomacy when what they really needed was with some bloody authority to roll down the locals and do their jobs.

Field agents she’d only ever seen in the halls and now knows far too intimately. She’s drafting a company wide memo when she gets into the office next that no one should ever, _ever_ give Saunders cashews. Who gets gas from _cashews_? And who eats them before getting in a fucking _van_ for six hours?

And now it seems like it’s all followed her home, de-boarding a commercial flight that was supposed to be turbulent-free and, at the very least, free of leering, armrest-hogging businessmen in too much cologne, and was neither.

She’s irritated with Jake, she’s mad at Pete, and if her mum insists on her presence at a family dinner tomorrow, she’s liable to burn down the mansion.

Except for the bathroom. That marble one off the guest room, with the gleaming, clean counters and the giant, hot shower, the running faucets and the working toilets. Yes, she’s going to leave that bathroom standing, and she’s going to _live_ in it.

What she wants is for the Doctor to pick her up, take her home, give her a few minutes to get ready, and then let her curl up on his bare chest and sleep for at least 10 hours.

(She’ll move after 20 minutes, she always moves, he’s so _bony_ , but those long, drowsy moments pressed to his bare skin, his heart beating steadily under her ear, are some of her favorite moments in all of time — and she would know.)

What she gets instead is a rising sense of fury after retrieving her luggage from baggage claim, because the Doctor’s nowhere to be found.

It’s not that she imagined him sweeping her up into his arms, wrapping her in a tight hug before pulling back to kiss her wet and deep, murmuring how much he’d missed her while they scandalized a few old ladies, she’s not _that_ out of touch with reality and she knows —

No.

She _did_ imagine that. She’ll admit it. Even if it seemed unlikely.

At the very least though, she imagined him there in _some_ capacity, and now she’s quietly seething as she listens to his phone ring on the other end of her mobile.

“Rose!” he chirps. “Where are you? I thought you landed half an hour ago?”

“I _did_ land half an hour ago,” she grits out. “I’m standing in the middle of the terminal two baggage claim. Where are _you_?”

The line goes silent for a moment and she can hear the muffled sounds of the Doctor turning his head.

“…Oh.”

“ _What_ , Doctor?” she says, the words coming out sharp.

“I’m in the terminal _one_ baggage claim.”

She literally feels her foot tense, itching to stomp her boot against the ground and she barely suppresses the urge. “Terminal _two_ , Doctor. It was an _international_ flight, coming in through the _international_ terminal.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he sounds plaintive. “I’ll go get the car right now. I’ll come meet you inside in ten minutes.”

“No,” she bites off. “That’s ridiculous, I’ll just meet you at the curbside pick-up.”

And with that, she hangs up, stabbing at the screen of her phone in a way that doesn’t make her feel better, not even a little.

She knows she’s being unreasonable, everything that happened before right now isn’t the Doctor’s fault. He had no control over Jake’s loud snoring, or Pete’s insistence that each city would be the last, even if it took five tries for him to be right. The Doctor can barely even be faulted for not knowing the right terminal, it’s not like she’d had more than a second to give him her flight information.

But still, she just — she wanted very specific things, she’s worked so bloody hard, and now there’s this, complicating things even more.

With a deep breath that does no good to quell her anger, she shoulders her duffel bag once more, grabbing the handle of her rolling luggage and tugging it behind her.

She’s not on the curb for more than a few minutes before the Doctor’s pulling up in their little blue hybrid.

He pops the boot and moves to get out of the car, but she barks at him that’s she got it, and lifts in her bags on her own, before sliding into the passenger seat.

“Welcome home," he says with a small smile. "Sorry I got it wrong."

“It’s fine,” she answers, eyes trained forward on the road in front of them. And then, because she’s being wretched, she forces herself to lean over and give him a kiss. “It’s just been a long couple of weeks, I can’t wait to get home.”

“It’s OK, I get it, I really am sorry,” he says, putting the car back in drive to maneuver out of the zeppelin port, and somehow just the sound of his voice is irritating right now.

She takes another deep breath, and it does about as much good as it had done a few minutes ago, but she forces herself to speak levelly.

“Doctor, I am trying very hard not to have a fit right now. You need to know it’s not about you, but I am in a bloody _awful_ mood, and if you could just get us home, and not do _anything_ , that would be best.”

It’s pouring out of her like poison, dripping, black vitriol that she can’t seem to stop, and when he nods quietly, like a kicked puppy, she feels her ire flare even further.

With a tremendous effort, she doesn’t snap at him about it, instead tipping her head back to the car seat and closing her eyes.

When she opens them next, it’s to see that the Doctor’s parked the car at their building. He smiles at her, hesitant, when he sees she’s awake, and she feels horrible all over again.

“I’ll get your bags,” he says, and then he’s ducking out of the car, even the way he’s slammed the door behind him managing to rankle her.

They troop up to the flat in silence, and she tries to concentrate on counting each of her steps in an effort to calm down. None of this is his fault, none of this is his fault, she’s repeating it like a refrain, an undercurrent to each number, each step.

They reach the door and he fumbles for his keys while she leans heavily against the door jamb.

He fits the key in the lock, turning it, and resting his hand on the knob, pausing for a moment like he’s going to tell her something, but then he shakes his head to himself and opens the door.

She steps in behind him, the living room lamp is on, but not the overhead one, and it’s just enough to see that the flat is a bloody disaster, complete disarray and mess covering every inch.

Her blood boils in her veins, she hadn’t left it squeaky clean, but it was certainly better than this, and she can’t keep it back, all of it spilling over, rushing out of her.

“What the _fuck_?!” she roars the last word, stomping past the Doctor and into the flat, a quick glance at the kitchen confirming it’s in a similar state.

“This — _this_ is what I come home to? I went away for twelve days, Doctor. Twelve bloody days and it looks like you threw a fucking rave, going after your first ASBO. You’re a grown man, how could you not notice what a mess this is?”

The Doctor is staring at her wide-eyed. “I — I’m sorry?”

She tugs her luggage out of his hands, shoving it off to the side of the entry way.

“Was that a question, Doctor? Do you not _know_ if you’re sorry? God _damn_ it, Doctor, this is ridiculous —”

It’s not the end of her tirade, not by a long shot, she’s taking everything out on him, some distant part of her recognizes that. The flat has looked worse than this when they’ve spent the weekend in, it’s not that big of a deal, but she just — she can’t _think_ straight.

He holds up a hand to stop her.

“Hey, I think that’s enough,” he says, his voice calm.

But it’s _too_ calm, infuriatingly calm, and it sets her off once more, and she’s ranting at him all the way to the bedroom. She’s not even going to bother with a shower, she’s getting right into bed, and if the filthy little zeppelin germs clinging to her skin get all over the sheets and make him sick, then he can bloody well get his own fucking soup.

With rough, jerky movements, she strips her boots and clothing off, getting into bed in her knickers and vest with a huff.

“I was just gonna —” he gestures over his shoulder with his thumb. “I have some work I need to —”

She squeezes her eyes shut, tossing her head back and forth on the pillow.

“No, no, no,” she says. “Can’t you just get in bed and lay here — this isn’t how it was supposed to be, it was supposed to be nice and happy, and god, you just — you _ruined_ it.”

She hadn’t even bothered to turn the light on when she entered the room, but at that, the Doctor flips it on, brightness filling the space, and she opens her eyes.

He’s standing near the door looking quietly angry, that stupid, steely oncoming storm look that makes her want to claw his face off and and and — and she doesn’t even know what — eat it, throw it away, set it on fire, _something_.

“That’s enough, Rose.”

“Fuck you,” she says, sitting up, and she winces internally. She’s crossing so many lines, being so horrible, but that realization -- that she’s so out of control, behaving so irrationally, makes it all worse, because why -- _why_ can’t she reign in her bloody emotions? She’s stronger than this.

“You think this is what I wanted?” he says, pushing his hand through his hair, refusing to rise to her bait, but winding himself up just the same. “I missed you so much, Rose. _So_ much, and you come roaring into London like I personally pissed in your cereal this morning, didn’t even _ask_ me how my week was.

“The Klunidian is still here, in case you care, and he’s discovered that screaming is a good way to get my attention, good job his voice can shatter glass then, eh? Nothing like a piercing headache to help you take the job home. But it’s fine, because there’s more noise at home! You know you volunteered us to watch Tony?”

Oh. Oh, god. She’d forgotten.

“Yeah, you did, and your mum couldn’t reschedule. It was _overnight_ , Rose. That mess out there? Did you even look? It’s bloody — I don’t know — Legos and toy trucks and little army men. Did you know I had food poisoning last week? I didn’t want to mention it while you were gone, because I knew it would make you feel bad, but I spent two days in the loo! Two days! I lost half a stone! I’m sorry you ended up in East Bumblefuck Wales, but you’re not the only one in a sour mood right now, and the last thing I need is you bloody yelling at me like a child!”

Rose feels her horror rising, mortification and guilt and — terrifyingly, still a bit of anger. If he didn’t _tell_ her that stuff, how is she supposed to _know_ about it? How could she know he was sick? It was probably that Chinese place, she’s said how many times now that the fried rice is dodgy and he just keeps ordering it and keeps ordering it — and, oh god, what is _wrong_ with her?

She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Doctor,” she says when she’s finished. “I just —” she cuts herself off when she realizes she’s making excuses. “I’m sorry.”

He nods, flipping the light back off. “I’ll be in later.”

When he’s in the hallway, his feet getting softer as he walks away, she calls out. “Doctor?”

His head appears in the doorway, backlit. “Yeah?”

“Really, can you just lay here for a little bit? I missed you.”

He sighs, and she expects him to protest, but instead he begins undressing, stripping down to his pants and sliding under the sheets to join her a moment later.

The guilt still pushing thickly through her veins, she shifts toward him, resting her head on his chest and slinging an arm across his stomach.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbles into his skin, squeezing his hip.

“It’s fine, Rose,” he says, and she feels him press a kiss to the top of her head, but his tone had been frosty.

They lay in silence for a few minutes, Rose allowing the anger to fizzle out of her, her body growing warm and heavy as she breathes in the Doctor’s scent, listens to his heart beat under her ear, just like she’d wanted.

After a few more minutes, it becomes clear she’s not going to be able to sleep. She moves the hand on his hip to edge across the waistband of his pants, fingers tracing lightly as she holds her breath and waits for him to stop her.

He doesn’t stop her, but he doesn’t encourage her either, and she knows this is not the time for this, she should go to sleep, maybe take a pill to help, and then do her best to apologize in the morning.

Instead, she shifts against him, moving her head onto the pillow next to his and giving her hand more room to move. She skates her fingers across his chest, alternating light touches with scrapes of her nails, ringing his nipples, the bars of his ribs, the edge of his hipbone.

She dips a finger under the waistband of his pants once more, the nail rough against skin and hair. He’s breathing steadily beside her and it’s too dark to see if her actions are having any effect, so she discreetly gives her palm a quick pass over the front of his pants.

He’s half-hard, maybe a little bit less than half, but it’s something, and she sets out to make it more, burying the guilt in her system, the anger, underneath a mission.

Her hand trails down his legs, up the inside of his thighs, edging under the leg of his pants until she can feel the warmth of him against her fingertips, and then she’s retreating again, smoothing up his abdomen, his chest, until she’s running a finger across his collarbone, up his neck, and around the shell of his ear.

Gently, so as not to spook him, she presses a kiss to the shoulder nearest to her on the pillow, and that, finally, brooks a reaction, he moves the arm that’s pinned between them so that his hand rests on her thigh. He doesn’t go any further, and she can tell it might be a placating gesture, suggesting a stop to this, but she continues.

She makes the circuit a few more times, deliberately avoiding his cock until she’s certain it’s got to be hard. When she finally makes another pass there, against the front of his pants, she finds she’s right, but it doesn’t quite feel like the victory it should.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbles again, her voice muffled against the skin of his shoulder.

He doesn’t react, but she keeps her hands on the front of his pants and he allows her to stroke him, his hips arching minutely when she increases the pressure.

In a series of awkward movements, she pulls away from his side and crawls down his body. He parts his legs when she moves to kneel between them and she works the waist of his pants down and over his cock, careful not to catch it.

She shimmies down the end of the bed, hopping off of it briefly to tug his pants from his feet, and while she’s standing, she strips off her knickers and vest, resuming her place between his legs, but naked this time, a moment later.

Looking up at him, she can see his eyes in the darkness, and she raises her eyebrows in question. He pauses for a moment, looking reluctant, but finally nods his head. She raises her eyebrows again, needing further confirmation, and this time he nods more resolutely.

She smiles at him, it feels forced and clumsy and apologetic, and then she takes his cock into her mouth. Normally she might tease him a bit, but tonight she gets right to it, sucking at him firmly, hands cupping his balls, the light little tugging motions she knows he favors.

There was so much adrenaline — so much _fury_ — in her system that the shift toward arousal is like a tidal wave and she feels herself grow wet and needy. When the Doctor begins rutting against her mouth softly, she pulls away from him, clambering quickly up his body until her entrance is poised above him.

With a steadying hand, she positions him, and then she’s sinking down on top of him. He hisses out a breath and when she chances a look at his face, his eyes are closed.

Suddenly, she feels sick, and wrong, and terrible. This is not what she wanted, and it’s her own fault. But she’s started this now, and it wouldn’t be fair to him not to finish it. And in a way, she wants to, she wants to give this to him, a token of apology, so she begins to move.

It’s never been her favorite position, and it’s not the Doctor’s favorite either, he’s lost so much control in this body, he told her once, that he likes taking it back where he can, and so she only rocks above him for a few moments, before curling her hands around his shoulders and pulling gently, encouraging him to move.

In their best, most in-sync and dedicated moments, they can perform this roll and he’ll stay inside of her, but tonight he slips from her, and it feels like they’re working independently — her to roll to her back, him to take position over her.

He moves a hand to his cock once he’s settled between her legs, and pushes into her, one long thrust until he’s fully seated inside of her. He begins to move quickly, immediately into the rhythm he prefers, even if it’s not what works best for her, even if he usually doesn’t start this until she’s already come.

She owes him this much, at least, though, and she focuses on trying to apologize once more, this time with her hands, her body, running across his back, fingers curling against his arse. Normally she’d be making noise, but it feels like a time to keep them back, so she only lets herself make quiet sounds, breaths and moans to encourage him, but she does none of the talking she normally does, and he offers none in return.

It feels, still, like they’re working independently, and for a moment, she forgets about herself, concentrating on meeting his hips thrust for thrust, trying to take him as deep as she can, trying to wrap him up tightly. He's her best friend in the world, in the universe, and they're fighting, she'd picked a fight with him, and she wants nothing more than for it to be completely behind them.

He shudders to an orgasm a few moments later, she feels it in the way his body goes rigid, the nearly plaintive whimper he lets go against her neck, and the way he’s pulsing inside of her.

She thinks to stop now, she deserves this, to go to bed unsatisfied, but the Doctor doesn’t move, instead he shifts, keeping himself inside of her, but angling so he’s pressing against her clit, rocking little motions that rub against her. She feels the stirrings of her climax, but it seems so far away, and she wants to give up, but the Doctor isn’t relenting, and she has to try, for him.

Focusing on happier moments like this, filthy ones and laughing ones, and everything this should be, she’s able to move closer — closer, closer, closer, until he sucks at her neck and she lets go with a groan from the back of her throat. Her body shudders underneath him, and he works her through it, letting her ride it out until she’s still.

He collapses on top of her for a moment, and she immediately wraps her arms and legs around him, clinging to him, as a wave of emotion overtakes her. She wants to cry, can feel the tears pricking the backs of her eyes, her throat swelling, but forces herself to swallow it down, a second later he's moving off of her.

They take turns in the bathroom, and she lets the Doctor go first, staring at the ceiling of their bedroom, trying to untangle her emotions.

When he comes back out, he grabs his pajama bottoms off of the dresser, and a white t-shirt, slipping them on over his pants. Neither of them sleep completely naked very often, but usually if they've had sex this late, he just puts his pants back on, and she wears her knickers, and they go to bed like that.

It seems like a message, maybe even an unconscious one on his part, a callback to the way he used to wear his clothing like armor, but she takes his lead, using the loo and washing her face before slipping into a clean t-shirt and some leggings over her knickers.

She'd avoided looking at the bed while she was dressing, too afraid that he'll be turned away from her, but as she moves to get under the blankets, she can't avoid it, and she's relieved to see he's lying on his back.

Slipping into bed, she presses a quick kiss to his mouth, not even long enough to see if he'll return the pressure of it, but when she goes to pull back, he tips his head, bringing his lips to press a kiss to her forehead, too. It's their nighttime ritual, a kiss on the mouth, and one on the forehead. She's always wondered if that second kiss is a kiss for -- or from -- the other Doctor, but she's never asked, and now isn't the time.

She'd rowed with him, too, of course, the other Doctor, but never so domestically, and she spares a thought to that -- would he allow it? Would he behave the way this one does? Or would he run before she got the chance?

It's fruitless thinking, and she rolls over onto her side, facing away from the Doctor, and hoping hoping hoping that he'll spoon up behind her.

After a long moment, one where she counts the seconds, outlines all the digits on the glowing alarm clock, he finally does, and she settles back against him gratefully, securing the arm he's got slung around her waist by laying her own on top of it and squeezing his hand.

"I'm sorry," she says again.

"I'm sorry, too," he says, nuzzling his nose into her hair.

When they wake the next morning, the specter of the fight has cleared, and she watches him shave in the mirror after he showers.

There's an angry red mark on his shoulder that she doesn't remember leaving, and it haunts her until it fades.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He feels something fall within him, but as soon as she’d said it, he’d realized it was true. Just this morning he’d seen that the supplies for that time had been moved from underneath the sink to the top of the counter, and for some reason, hadn’t thought anything of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As that snippet would imply: this is period sex. Fluffy period sex, but still, if that's gonna bother you, I wouldn't read it.

It was supposed to be romantic.

For a couple that doesn’t _actually_ have full-time, permanent employment, they sure do seem to spend a lot of time in the Torchwood offices, and it had taken an entire week to get him to this point.

Friday afternoon and not a lick of work ahead of him, his desk cleared, both metaphorically and literally, and now he’s ready to leave early, ready to spend the next few hours at home, preparing for Rose’s arrival.

He doesn’t even say goodbye — he likes his coworkers well enough, all nice, smart people, but all people in the habit of, “Before you go…” and, “Just one more thing,” and he if gives them an opening, there’s not a doubt in his mind that they’ll take it.

So he doesn’t, ducking out of the office while everyone’s head are bowed over the lab tables, and scurrying out the front door before even the check-in desk can look twice at him. 

He makes the walk home quickly, and with a spring in his step, he’s confident Rose won’t see this coming. They haven’t celebrated anniversaries, they have so many and, as of a small ceremony a couple months ago, the ring a pleasant, still-novel weight on his finger, they’ll have a new one next year.

But this one — this one is important. 

Ten years since the first time he met her, ten years since he grabbed her hand in a basement and changed his life — all of his lives — forever. 

And he knows now, with Rose, what that word truly means. 

He’d hatched and discarded a million plans, one — the one that included props — even saw him down at Debenham’s, trying to persuade a clerk to give him a shop dummy arm. She hadn’t given in and he’d eventually moved on, both from the store, and from the plan. 

There had been thoughts of soft music, flowers, chocolate, the works, but the only flowers he wants to give her grow an entire universe and several billion years away, and the chocolates he’d bought on his lunch break Tuesday were gone before he’d left the office for the day. 

Instead he’d settled on everything he never thought he’d have — everything he never thought _they’d_ have — dinner in their flat, a movie on their telly, seduction on their sofa, and clean sheets on their bed. 

It’s not much, not really, especially since dinner was to be chips, picked up a couple of hours from now and timed to be hot when Rose got home, but if it’s the thought that counts, this is worth the big bucks — he’d thought about it _a lot_. 

He sets to cleaning the flat, they’ve got music channels on their television now, songs that play over moving geometry, star-scapes and landscapes and picturesque nature scenes. Sometimes he and Rose sit on the sofa and watch them, and he tells her what they look like, speaking fondly of worlds he’ll never visit again, while enjoying the comfort of the one he’s in now. 

There’s no time for sofa-sitting at the moment though, and it takes the better part of an hour — and one dance break/air guitar solo he’d never admit to, to finish tidying, but once it’s done, the flat looks great, if he does say so himself. 

(He does.)

He strips the bed and puts the lot in the wash, rummaging in the cupboard for the omnipresent extra sheet sets that Jackie Tyler keeps buying them, high thread counts and eco-fibers and little ruffled bed skirts. It’s not his favorite thing in the world — a mark from Jackie in their bedroom, but they do look nice and he arranges everything just so, even fluffing the pillows before he goes. 

Laying out the absurdly priced china — another Jackie purchase, on their occasion of their wedding, and in apparent rebellion of the no fuss way they went about it — he arranges it neatly on the kitchen table and then sets off to the chip shop, right on schedule.

When he’s back, he moves the sheets to the dryer, and puts the chips on the plates before collapsing on the sofa to wait for Rose. 

It’s just enough time to watch some celebrity take the course in Top Gear and he thinks of the way Rose had cheated — outright _cheated_ — during the Torchwood defensive driving class. He should’ve been top ranked, and there was Rose, cutting corners and charming the instructor.  

Her key is in the lock as the movie star finishes his lap, and the Doctor’s bounding off the sofa to meet her.

“Hello,” he greets her at the door. 

“Oh!” Rose says, apparently surprised to see him right in the entryway. “Were you going out?”

He presses a kiss to her mouth and then one to her forehead. “Not at all, in fact, I’m staying in, and so are you, all night.”

Rose looks surprised and he backpedals.

“Ah, I should’ve checked, shouldn’t I? You probably have plans, I know Lynn down in finance has been trying to get you for a drink and I —”

“ _Doctor_ ,” she cuts him off, holding a hand up, the one that sparkles with her engagement and wedding rings. “I don’t have any plans, staying in sounds great.” She pauses for a moment, considering. “Do I smell chips?”

He beams at her. “You do! From your favorite shop, although why you couldn’t like any of the four closest to our flat remains a mystery for a far better detective than me. Here, take your shoes off, and we’ll eat.”

Rose follows suit, toeing off her shoes and following him into the kitchen. He moves to the fridge, collecting drinks, there’s a bottle of champagne ready, but Rose peers over his shoulder. 

“Nah, a beer, I think, don’t you?”

“Fine by me,” he says, snagging two bottles. 

Rose moves to the drawers, pulling out the bottle opener and handing it to him. He pops the cap from one and hands it to her, grinning as she takes a long drink, her throat muscles working as she tips her head back. 

It’s the moments like this that sometimes get him the most, the mundane, everyday moments not unlike times when they were in the TARDIS, but made more somehow for the fact that they’re not there. 

He opens the second bottle and moves to the table, grandly pulling out her chair and making sure she’s settled before taking his own seat.

She pinches a chip from her plate, eating it, and then she sighs happily. “ _That’s_ why we go to the far away shop — perfect chip, just perfect.”

When she moves for another, he stops her. “Wait, we’ve got to have a toast,” he says, lifting his bottle.

She nods and does the same, raising her beer in the air. “Right, to the weekend,” she says happily. 

He laughs, stopping her again. “Just — just let me do this, OK?”

Rose gives him a silly, confused look. “OK, Doctor, toast away.”

Clearing his throat, he keeps his bottle aloft. “Ten years ago, time being relative, of course —”

“Of course,” she confirms, with a solemn nod, broken apart by her smile.

“Ten years ago today, a little human, changed my life — _saved_ my life in a basement, just by taking my hand, and I can’t say this is where I’d have predicted we’d end up, but I couldn’t be happier. You’ve made me happy, Rose,” he shifts to catch her eye, emboldened by the way she’s shining at him. “And I didn’t think I would have that, didn’t think I deserved it —”

She opens her mouth, likely to protest, but he shakes his head.

“And whether I deserve it quite this much is still a matter for the universe to work out, but in the meantime, I’ll be right here, with you, forever.”

“Forever,” Rose echoes, and they clink bottles.

She takes another long sip, and when she’s finished, she smiles at him fondly. “That was pretty sappy, you know.”

He shrugs, grinning at her softly. “I know.”

“I love you,” she says.

“I know,” he says again.

She laughs. “No, that’s not your line, that’s Han Solo. You, a vulnerable women professes her love to _you_ , and _you_ say —”

“Quite right, too.”

He ducks the hand she swats at his shoulder. “I love you,” he says, catching her hand. “Almost as much as you love these chips. Now get eating or they’ll get cold.”

They make quick work of the food, Rose nicking a few chips from his plate when she’s finished her own, fingers dancing over the selection before picking out the best ones with an impish look. 

When they’re done, he does the dishes, right away, like she likes, but can never bring herself to do on her own, and then he joins her on the sofa. 

“Thought we’d watch a movie,” he says, grabbing for the remote. “Unless you’re invested in —” he squints at the telly, ‘Britain’s Top 25 Beach Bodies?’”

“Not at all,” she says. “Look at them, so tan, would set unrealistic expectations for me the next time we visit the shore and you blind the locals with the latest in pale-and-freckled.”

“Hey,” he protests, giving her a wounded look, “I’ll have you know that the cluster on my left shoulder is a dead ringer for the Beta star field in the Grass Cluster.”

“I know,” she says, drawing out the vowel. “I told you that, remember? Still can’t believe you stripped off in my parents’ kitchen to show Tony. My mum _still_ warns the new staff that you’re a nudity risk.”

He laughs, queueing up the superhero movie Rose had wanted to see, but that they missed in theaters. “Come here,” he says, settling his arm around her shoulders to nestle her against him, before stretching his legs out onto the coffee table.

“And a feet-on-the-furniture risk,” Rose adds as the movie’s title cards come up. 

It’s a good movie, one he’d wanted to see, too, and he lets himself get absorbed in it right up until the final battle scene. He loses interest in all the kicking and punching and explosions; things are rarely so choreographed in real life and instead he focuses on Rose. 

She’s shifted her torso away from him, lying back in the cushions, with her legs slung over his outstretched ones, her thighs angled across his lap. 

With the confidence of a man who has done this exact thing countless times before, he begins drawing patterns on her legs over her jeans. They’re black and tight and the denim is sort of thin, and he can feel the warmth of her skin underneath the fabric. He traces a finger along the inside seam and then dances back down to her knee, past her calves to ring the skin of her ankle.

She settles into the sofa further with a content sound and the movie continues to play until he’s not looking at it at all, instead maneuvering so he can reach her blouse, undoing the buttons one by one and sliding a finger over her bra and down the skin of her abdomen.

It’s an unnatural position for her body, but she doesn’t seem to be keen to move, and she’s not exactly resisting, but she’s not doing much to encourage him either. 

When the credits finally start to roll, he shifts his legs from underneath hers and then guides her by the hips until she’s straddling him, bent on her knees with a leg on either side of his thighs.

“Hello,” he says and presses a kiss to her mouth.

She makes a perfunctory move to reciprocate, but there’s something closed off, she doesn’t deepen it, just sets her hands on his shoulders and pulls back to look at him.

He smiles at her, a warm thing that has him looking in her eyes, but then she’s got a finger up, tracing the bones and lines of his face, across his eyebrows, down his nose, across his lips. She traces his earlobe, playing with it lightly, and ends cupping his face, pressing another quick kiss to his mouth. 

“I really do love you,” she says, and begins to move off his lap, and some hopeful part of him assumes it’s to go to the bedroom. 

Instead of letting her up, he secures her legs around him and stands up, laughing as she squeals and clings to him for purchase. 

“Doctor —” she breathes, still giggling as he walks her down the hall.

“No, no, don’t say anything, we’re gonna get you out of these clothes, you’re gonna lie down on the bed, and then I’m gonna lick you ’til you scream.”

At that, Rose’s body tenses in his arms, and when he crosses the threshold of the bedroom and sets her down, she’s looking at him funny. 

“It’s my — I have my period — you know that, right?”

He feels something fall within him, but as soon as she’d said it, he’d realized it was true. Just this morning he’d seen that the supplies for that time had been moved from underneath the sink to the top of the counter, and for some reason, hadn’t thought anything of it. 

He scratches a hand at the back of his neck, unprepared for this scenario. 

“I mean, we still can,” Rose says, shifting awkwardly, her bare feet curling into the carpet. “Not the licking thing, but, you know — other stuff?”

He nods, not put off by the idea, but still confused as to how he didn’t realize. 

Rose, though, takes his silence for disapproval. “I just — I thought you said it didn’t bother you? It’s not like we haven’t done it before, and it’s not very heavy yet and —” she trails off, looking unsure. 

At that, he fumbles to reply. “No, no, no, it’s fine, it doesn’t bother me at all, if you’re OK with it, I just had plans, big plans, but I can adjust them.”

“Rain check on those parts?” Rose says.

“Definitely,” he nods. “Is there anything you want to do first?”

“Yep,” she presses a kiss to his lips and then darts off into the en suite. 

He undresses while she’s gone, stripping down to his pants and considering the merits of taking those off, too. Eventually he settles on leaving them on, pulling the blanket and top sheet down to the foot of the bed and lying propped up against the pillows.

In a lazy motion, he begins to stroke at his cock through his pants, rubbing a palm over himself, cupping his growing erection and squeezing, and when Rose returns, she’s completely naked and he’s completely hard.

“Get started without me?” she says, eyeing the bulge in his boxer briefs.

“Oh, we’ll catch you up quick, Rose Tyler,” he says, extending a hand to her.

She takes it and he tumbles her down onto the bed next to him, mindful of the way she’s not being as brazen as usual with spreading her legs. 

Rolling to her back, she tugs him to her by the shoulders, so that his legs are still to the side of hers, but his upper body is angled over hers and he’s leaning on his forearm pinned between their bodies.

He kisses her slowly, his tongue slipping into her mouth as he slides his free hand everywhere he can reach. He traces idle patterns across her skin as they kiss with an unhurried rhythm, her shoulders, her neck, her collarbone, her breasts, light touches and firm touches, all the foreplay lead up she likes, as her arm curls across his back scratching at him in encouragement.

They kiss for a long while, and she moves her hand to the back of his pants. “Take these off,” she murmurs against his lips, and he leans away to comply.

When he returns, he shifts his mouth to her neck, kissing at the spot where it meets her shoulder, sucking at her wet and slow, retreating and returning as his breath ghosts against her skin, that warm, sweet smell he associates with Rose filling his body with arousal and happiness. 

He moves his lips to behind her ear, her earlobe, and she shudders underneath him.

“Tickles,” she laughs around a breath, and he preens a little bit at that. When he’s teased her for a while, lighting his fingertips across her so delicately, so slowly, she gets like this sometimes, every inch of her skin sensitized and over-sensitized. 

He shifts down her body to her breasts, tugging a nipple between his lips and teeth firmly enough that it shouldn’t tickle here, and soon she’s writhing underneath him, her hips flexing against the mattress when he brings his hand to the breast further from him. He sucks and massages her in an alternating rhythm, switching sides with his mouth, content to stay here forever.

Eventually, Rose tugs him away by the hair, fingers slipping into the strands and pulling lightly.

“You know, this is why I don’t believe you when you say you’re more of an arse man,” she laughs.

His hand skates down her side, curling underneath her to squeeze her bum. “I _am_ an arse man.”

“The four hours you just spent visiting my boobs would say different.”

He sniffs. “It was hardly four hours, but if it bothers you that much, I won’t be visiting them again.”

She urges his head to hers, pressing a firm kiss to his mouth. “You wouldn’t last a week,” she challenges against his lips.

Pulling back, he looks at her breasts, turning his head to the side and back, considering. “You’re right. But, for the record, I am neither a boob man, or a bum man, I am a Rose Tyler man,” he says with a syrupy smile. 

“And you’re a properly cheesy man, too,” and with that, she moves to kiss him again, cutting off his reply. 

His hand resumes its journey across her body, and Rose fits her own between them, grasping his cock and stroking in the same lazy rhythm he’d been using earlier. 

When his hand passes her abdomen and reaches the short thatch of hair between, he tips his head back.

“Do you want…with my fingers?” he asks, smoothing his hand over the hair there. It’s not something he normally does, but again, it’s not because he’s opposed to it — whatever she’s comfortable with, really, he’s likely game. 

“No, it’s all right,” she says. “I’m good.”

“How good?” he asks with raised eyebrows. 

“Plenty good and well aware you don’t need your ego stroked.”

In a flash, he’s got his hand over hers where it’s wrapped around his cock. “I do need this stroked though.”

She smiles and rolls her eyes affectionately, but allows him to guide her over his erection a few times. Then she’s shifting, moving him by the hips to rest between her legs before pausing.

“Or would you rather — from behind?”

“Doesn’t matter to me,” he says, and he means it, because so long as this ends with him buried in Rose, he’s happily along for the ride.

“Well, it’s just — when I’m like this, it’s not really…great to switch positions,” she looks vaguely uncertain, or embarrassed, and that’s the last thing he wants, so he takes his cock in his hand and positions himself.

“Like this is fine.”

“Oh, _fine_ , I’m flattered, I’m sure, it’s _fine_ , completely adequate in every —”

He cuts her off by pushing into her, smiling when her mouth falls open around a silent groan.

“Yes,” he says, bucking into her with a smirk and more control than he feels. “Entirely mediocre, practically a perfect neutral.”

“Shut up,” she says. “And _move_.”

He’s off then, his banter far less sparkling, and far more broken. 

“God, that’s so good,” he breathes out a few moments later, and only realizes what he’s said when Rose is grinning against his shoulder.

“Ah, good, glad to be moving up in the world,” she says, but she’s panting and he can only grunt in reply. 

He thrusts into her harder, pushing them both closer as her limbs wind around him, legs around his hips and arms around his back, bundling him to her as he rabbits his hips against hers, straining for his own climax while trying to keep friction for hers.

His mouth returns to the spot on her neck, by her ear, but there’s no laughter this time, no ticklish spots, until she’s moaning underneath him as he works against her.

“Right there,” she says, “Perfect, oh god, yes,” she draws the sibilant out until she cuts it off abruptly with a shout, “Fuck, fuck,” and then her words are lost to garbled speech and she’s coming beneath him, fingers curling into his skin and tensing tightly. 

She goes completely boneless under him when she finishes, legs flopping to the sides while her arms slacken across his back. “You can go,” she mumbles.

He picks his rhythm back up, pulling back and fitting his arms underneath her legs until her knees rest in the dips of his elbows and he’s able to push into her with more leverage. 

There’s a vague rush of wetness between them, and Rose winces at the feel, but then she’s arching her head back into the pillow, the column of her throat on perfect display as her hands come up to massage her breasts, and she’s tugging at her nipples far harder than he’s ever dared to. 

It’s only a handful of thrusts later and he’s close, his hips slamming into her without finesse, a thin sheen of sweat breaking out across his brow and back. 

Below him, Rose pushes her breast together, creating ample cleavage, and he stutters over the sight, gaze flickering from her chest to her mouth to her eyes and back again. 

“Yeah, fuck, that feels great,” she breathes, “Oh god, I love it when you come —” and then she’s breaking off, stopped by the grunt he gives as he pushes into her a final time, releasing in deep pulses as she arches her hips tightly to his. 

A moment later, he’s letting go of her legs and collapsing on top of her, bracing himself on his forearms and pressing light kisses to her collarbone and neck. “Think I heard a ‘great’ in there at the end,” he mumbles.

“You did,” she says, pressing a kiss to his temple. “But it was all talk.”

She unwinds her arms from his back, legs stretching out as best they can on the sheets. He flexes, too, body taking up more space, and he hears the quiet sounds of the blankets slipping as her toes reach them and they tumble off the bed. 

He pulls himself out of her gently, and retreats off the bed. Rose rolls to the side and then clambers off the mattress. It’s dim in the room, they hadn’t bother to turn a light on, and by silent communication, they split up, her into the en suite and him padding out into the hallway to use the guest bathroom. 

It’s…not bad, the mess. But it’s certainly slightly higher on the mess scale than they usually encounter and he wipes himself down with toilet paper as best as he can. Then he takes a seat on the loo, legs spread, waiting for his erection to soften enough that he can pee through it. 

Rose always teases him about how long he takes when they’re done, and he wishes there were a way for her to experience trying to pee with a still half-erect cock. She wouldn’t tease him anymore, he’s sure of it. 

When he stands again, he’s finally able to take care of what he needs to, and there’s still blood clinging to the base of his cock. With a mental shrug, he flips on the guest shower and waits for it to warm, stepping in once its hot and using the detachable head to rinse himself off with a handful of the shower gel Rose keeps in here for — he doesn’t actually know why it’s in here. 

In all the time they’ve lived in this flat, they’ve only ever had Tony stay the night, and he’s not old enough to give himself baths yet, so they usually do it in their room. 

Well, he’s sure they’ll have guests someday, and as the smell of oranges fills the bathroom, he’s sure they’ll be pleased with the soap selection. 

A few moments more and he’s turning the shower back off, grabbing a towel from the bar to dry the parts of him he’d gotten wet, and then he’s padding back into the bedroom.

Rose has got the light on now, and she’s back in her knickers, this time with leggings and a vest top on, too. She’s standing at her side of the bed, staring at the sheet with a frustrated look.

“I made a mess,” she says, when she hears him. 

He picks his pants up from the ground, tugging them up, and then comes around behind her, peering at the sheet over her shoulder. “It’s not so bad.”

She lets out a disgusted noise and then tugs the pillows away, pulling the corner of the sheet up and he moves to the other side to help her.

“Was it bad for you? Did I hear the shower?” she looks guilty, and he rushes to reassure her.

“It wasn’t bad,” he says, “Just rinsed off.”

She shrugs, still clearly slightly bothered and when they work the sheet down to the bottom, he meets her in the middle, turning his head to give her a kiss.

“I told you not to change positions,” she says, frowning at the dirty sheet. “When you lifted my legs, I think that was —”

He stops her. “Rose, it could’ve been like the bloody Shining for all I care,” he says. “So long as you’ll let me, I’ll shag you anytime.”

She tips her head to his shoulder in a show of gratitude and then pulls back. “The _bloody_ Shining, eh?”

He drops the sheet on the ground in the pile of blankets and then taps a finger on the tip of her nose. “Ye _p_!”

Ten minutes later, they’ve got the clean sheets from the dryer and on the bed, and the dirty sheets waiting in the laundry room for tomorrow morning. 

Or, if he has a say, tomorrow early afternoon, after sleeping for a good, long time because he’s completely exhausted now, slipping between the clean bedding and guiding Rose to lie on his chest.

“Happy anniversary, Doctor,” she says against the skin there.

“Happy anniversary, Rose.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "We don't have to do this if you're not ready."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a baby. This probably counts as baby fic.

It was supposed to be a night out, everything carefully arranged so that Jackie took her first crack at babysitting and they had a few hours to themselves. 

But it was a Wednesday, an ordinary work-week Wednesday, and when he gets the text from Rose that her appointment had gone well and the doctor had given her the all-clear to resume normal activities -- including sex -- he's sitting at his desk, and has been for several hours. 

All he wants right then is to go home for the day and see both of his girls, the most important people in his world. He doesn't want Rose running their daughter over to the Tyler's before he gets home, and he doesn't want to sit in a restaurant, surrounded by other people, when he could be at home with a frozen pizza and his family. 

It's up to Rose though, if she wants this, if she needs it, he'll go along with it, because she's been so great, so completely and totally fantastic, giving him their daughter, giving him herself, that he's hardly prepared to deny her anything right now. 

He’s thinking about the best way to phrase all that, and considers just calling her — she’s probably back at home from the doctor now, but if the baby had just gone down for a nap, or if Rose is trying to feed her, he doesn’t want to interrupt. And he doesn’t want to make her feel bad, calling from work. 

It’s a tricky line, she’s told him, because she wants to be at home with their baby more than anything, but part of her is so tied to Torchwood, to the good they try to do, that taking time off, even from “consulting,” had been an adjustment.

He’s settled on a simple smiley emoticon, neutral enough, he figures, when his phone buzzes with another message.

_**What if we just all stayed in tonight?** _

He smiles at the phone, and Rose on the other side of it, back in their flat, well, their _house_ now, a bigger place they’d moved into only a month after Rose had found out she was pregnant. It’s too far to walk to on lunch, and they’re still just renting, but he feels properly settled now, they’d made a nursery and everything, even if they hadn’t put their daughter in it yet.

 _ **That sounds brilliant**_ , he types back. 

 _ **I’ll let Mum know, see you soon**_ , and she’d attached a selfie of her and their girl, Rose grinning, and the baby glaring stoically at the camera. 

He laughs, and the rest of work flies by. 

Three hours later he walks into a war zone. 

The house is a mess, burp cloths and nappies and dummies, baby toys littering the floor, and the baby herself screaming her head off as Rose stands in the living room without a shirt and does her best to get her to latch. 

It’s times like this he feels the most helpless, because he’d offer to take her, but if she needs to be fed, he’ll do no good, and instead he toes off his shoes, and approaches Rose cautiously. 

He presses a kiss to each of their heads, the baby stiffening, still fussing, in Rose’s arms, and he smiles apologetically.

“Has she been like this all day?”

Rose shrugs, and he can tell she’s fighting down frustration, trying to keep herself calm and not upset the baby more.

“Only the last hour,” she coos, grinning at the baby and speaking in a soft, placating voice. “But I’m about ready to rip my bloody ears off.” The last is added in the same soothing tone and the Doctor grins in spite of himself. 

“Aww, little bird, you can’t do that to your mum, her ears are lovely, we want to keep them in place,” he says lightly, still smiling. 

“Oh, I’m glad your dad thinks it funny,” she’s speaking to the baby again. “My boobs hurt, don’t they? They hurt a lot, because you won’t eat and —”

He steps closer to her again. “Here, I can try and calm her down, if you want, and then you can try again.”

There’s not even a token protest from Rose, she just gently upturns her arms and the baby into the Doctor’s waiting hands, and then flops on the sofa, shoving her face into a pillow and letting out a muffled scream.

When she resurfaces, her expression is clearer, and she smiles softly at the Doctor.

“Thank you,” she says, exhaling the words. 

He shrugs, bouncing the baby in his arms. “I’m sorry I can’t do more.”

“It’s fine, you’re great, you’re really are, it’s just — it’s so _hard_ , I knew it was going to be hard, and I love her so much, but sometimes I just — I need a shower in peace, you know?”

Nodding, he gently shuffles to the sofa, sitting down next to her while keeping up the rocking motions of his body. “I do, and Bird knows, too, don’t you?” he says, pressing another kiss to the baby’s head and then Rose’s. Her hair is wild from a day spent with the baby and the turn she just took into the couch cushions, and it’s endearing enough to make him smile again. 

“You know, you keep calling her Bird, she’s gonna think that’s her name,” Rose says.

He shrugs. “Nothing wrong with a good nickname.”

Rose smiles at him. “That may be so, _Doctor_ , but I don’t know how she’s gonna take to a nickname earned from the way she flapped her arms at one month old.”

“Oh, that’s not true, is it, Bird? You’re gonna take flight one of these days, you keep flapping like that.”

The baby is already beginning to settle, comforted by the voice of the Doctor, and he can tell from the frown on Rose’s face that she feels disappointed.

“I don’t smell like milk,” he offers. “She was probably just frustrated and confused or something.”

“That makes two of us then.”

“Look,” he says, tilting his arms so Rose can see their daughter, the way her eyelids are drooping. “I think she might just be tired. Why don’t you go take that shower and if she decides she _is_ hungry, I’ll feed her one of the pumped bottles in the fridge.”

Rose looks guilty. “There’s only one left, I — this isn’t the first time we’ve had trouble feeding today. I gave up earlier this morning and did a bottle then, too.”

“It’s fine, Rose, honestly. Our baby is not going to starve.”

Rose nods and pushes herself up off the sofa. “Why don’t you heat up that lasagna from last night while I’m in there?”

“Sounds good,” he says, brushing a gentle finger down Bird’s nose as Rose moves across the living room.  

“Make all of it,” Rose says from the landing. “Got the all-clear, remember? Gonna need that energy later,” she winks at him and darts up the stairs, her mood apparently already lightening at the thought of a quiet shower.

A few moments later he hears the water running and he settles Bird into her swing for a moment, rushing to get the leftovers into the microwave. As directed, he makes all of them. 

He’s not exactly intending to hold Rose to that particular energy expenditure, but if she’s feeling up to it, he’s certainly not going to protest. 

When she comes back down, she’s only wearing her pajama bottoms, Torchwood-issue sweatpants that are clingy enough for him to appreciate the view of her bum when she bends down to get Bird from her swing.

Luckily, Rose’s good mood remains, and Bird’s in a much better mood about latching. Rose finishes feeding the baby and then they tuck into luke-warm lasagna while their daughter lies contentedly in her swing once more. Rose had changed her into her pajamas while he’d cleaned up dinner, and she’s in some atrocious pink thing, a screen-printed tiara adorning the front.

When he’d questioned it, Rose had rolled her eyes and told her Jackie was at fault. Jackie’s own nicknames for Bird are much more princess-themed, and she buys outfits accordingly. They don’t dress Bird in them often, but tonight, it was apparently the only thing clean, and Rose had taken a picture, texting it off to her mum, and buying them another few days of princess-less clothing. 

It’s a few hours later, hours of playing and holding and babbling and bouncing, catching up with some shows on the telly and feeding a couple more times, when Bird is finally dropping off for what will hopefully be the night. 

She’s been sleeping in their room, a little portable cot by Rose’s side of the bed, and he moves to take Bird from where she’s sleeping in Rose’s arms on the couch, ready to put her down to sleep, when Rose shakes her head.

“Can you —” she adjusts the baby, lowering her voice. “Can you move the monitor?”

“Really?” He hadn’t been expecting that, he’s not completely opposed to it, willing to follow Rose’s lead, but _she_ had seemed opposed, and in some moments, he had visions of an 8-year-old Bird, curled up awkwardly in that same portable cot, Rose unwilling to let her leave even then. 

Rose shrugs. “I don’t know, maybe just for tonight.”

“Got big plans for tonight then?”

Rose makes a show of staring at the front of his jeans, reaching her hand out to nudge the bottom of his jumper out of the way, and then deliberately grabbing the hem of his undershirt, too, lifting them to his stomach to stare some more. 

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe slighty-bigger-than-average size plans?” she smirks at him, tongue touching the corner of her mouth.

“The cheek, Rose Tyler, I don’t know how I put up with this abuse.”

Rose uses the hand still at his waist to nudge him away. “Go move the monitor, and when you get back, we’ll discuss your compensation package.”

"I'll hold you to that," he says, and then jogs upstairs. 

The monitor is a complicated thing, practically rivaling the TARDIS -- a pad beneath to measure breathing, a little camera and view screen he watches Rose check every night, even if she can see the real thing just by sitting up in bed. 

He untangles everything, moving it to the nursery, outer space-themed by mutual agreement, and sets to connecting everything to the bigger cot that's in here. 

When he's done, Rose is already standing at the doorway to the nursery, Bird in her arms swaddled up like a little burrito. 

"I can put her down," he offers, moving to take the baby from her. 

"I wanna do it," Rose says, shuffling to the cot and laying Bird down gently. 

When she's done, she presses a light kiss to Bird's head, the little tuft of light brown hair there. It's a running bet — whether her hair will lighten further to blonde and match Rose’s, or darken up like his. 

Somehow he knows it's going to stay just like this, the perfect blend of the two of them, and he repeats the motion Rose had made, pressing a kiss to Bird's head. 

Rose checks the monitor one more time and then they leave the room on quiet feet. 

When he goes to shut the door, Rose stops him. 

"Not just yet," she says and he nods, leaving the door open. 

Then she's tugging him by the hand to their bedroom, pushing that door wide, too, before turning to face him. 

"We don't have to do this if you're not ready," he says. 

"Which _this_?"

He shrugs. "Either. She can sleep in here and we can, too, right to sleep, if you want."

Rose shakes her head. "No, I don't want to go to sleep." Her arms slide around his waist. "And if I want to move her back in here after tonight, it's not too much trouble to move the monitor again, is it?"

He thinks of the messy tangle of wires and shakes his head anyway. "None at all."

“Perfect,” she says, rising up on the balls of her feet to kiss him. 

He returns the kiss immediately, his mind tumbling down the path of the conclusion of this night embarrassingly fast.

She strokes her tongue into his mouth after only a moment, pushing her body against him. Her breasts are perfect normally, they really are, perfectly perfect as far as he’s concerned, but lately, now, they’re — well — they’re _big_ , and he can feel them against his chest, even through the thin t-shirt and bra she wears. 

It's a nursing bra, a little thing with hooks and panels, and in his more meandering fantasies, he unhooks the panels and plays with her breasts like that, perfectly framed by the black lace, but right now he just wants it off, he wants every single scrap of clothing off of them both. 

His hands move to the waist of her sweatpants tugging them down easily and bringing her knickers down, too. 

Rose steps out of the pile of clothing while stripping off her t-shirt and he can't resist undoing one of the hooks at the front and folding down the panel until her breast is revealed. 

"That thing is so clever," he says, ringing a gentle finger around her areola. 

Rose laughs, backing away slightly to take the bra off entirely. "Really? I think it looks like some BDSM thing when it's pulled down like that."

He tugs his jumper and t-shirt off, nodding in a way that makes his head get stuck in the fabric. "So?" he says when he resurfaces. 

"Not tonight," she answers, stepping closer to undo the fly of his jeans. "Gotta watch those anyway, you touch them too much, they're gonna start leaking."

He shrugs, unbothered. "I'll just have to focus my attention elsewhere then, won't I?" With that he drops a hand to between her legs, pleased to find the beginnings of moisture there. 

She'd had him so prepared for a million possibilities, among them that she wouldn't get wet, or that it would take a long time, and while he tried to tell himself he wouldn't mind, wouldn't take it personally, he knows some small part of him would have, and he's glad that's one hurdle jumped at least. 

He finishes shucking his jeans, catching his boxer briefs, too, and hopping out of them and then his socks while Rose reclines on the bed. 

He doesn't miss the quick glance she gives to the baby monitor, and can't resist one himself when he joins her on the blankets, but all is well, their little bird sleeping peacefully on the video screen. 

Pressing up against her, he takes a moment just to revel in the feel of her naked skin against his own. 

"Oh, I've missed this," he can't help the groan. 

Rose bristles at that, pulling back. "Hey, I've been --"

He drops a kiss to her shoulder. "No, no, no, I didn't mean it like that. You've been more than great…with your mouth, and your...hand. It's just -- it's different, it's better now that you can — well, that you can play, too."

Rose smiles at him, understanding what he’s stumbling through. "I know what you mean. Although...we did cheat a little, remember last week? Your very clever fingers?"

He preens at that. "They are clever, aren't they?" he says, dipping back between her legs to illustrate his point. "But you had knickers on, hardly the same, there's no comparison."

"Oh, I don't know," Rose says, allowing him to roll her underneath him. "I enjoy those fingers regardless, even when you're using them on yourself. I was just thinking about what you did to yourself with them in the shower a few days ago,” she pauses, blowing out a breath. “I thought about it _a lot_ , while I was waiting for you to move the monitor."

He strokes his middle finger along her opening, pushing the tip inside of her. "Is that what I have to thank for this then?" he spreads the moisture gathering there, "Having a wank in the shower and letting you watch?"

She shivers underneath him, hips arching up to meet his hand. “Partly,” she says. “You’re so much rougher than I am when you do that — is that how you want me to do it?”

Fitting her hand between their bodies, she takes his erection in a firm grip. “You never really say, should I do it differently? Would it be better that way?”

He stops the movement of his hand inside of her, groaning as he drops his head to her shoulder. “It’s better because it’s you. Anything you do, it’s all good, it’s all better.”

She keeps stroking him, rubbing her thumb around the tip of him, the underside, the angle’s not perfect, but his cock’s following it just the same, and he can’t help the hiss that escapes when she releases him to tug gently at his balls instead. 

“See?” he says, in a wavering voice. “That was a surprise. With me, I can anticipate what I’m gonna do. You’re unpredictable, it’s half the fun.”

It’s too much, being pressed up against her, naked, knowing what they’re going to do. “Rose, I can’t, it’s been a long time, just — let me — on you, for a little while.”

And with that, he moves away from her, slipping down her body until his head’s between her legs and his tongue is buried inside of her. He works her quickly, moving to suck at her clit, pushing a finger inside of her until she’s whimpering beneath him, needy and begging, her hands tugging at his hair.

“Stop, stop,” she pants when he can tell it’s almost inevitable, a few more grazes of her clit, a few more twists of his fingers and she’d be gone, but he stops to listen. “I want to come with you inside of me, on top of me. God, I missed that position.”

He nods, wiping his mouth on her leg with a hard kiss to her inner thigh. 

She’s maneuvering him by the hips, trying to get him between her own, arching helplessly up into him even though there’s nothing to meet yet.

“Rose, we need a condom, you said, condoms now,” he’s nearly pleading, she’s so close to him, her warmth, and her wetness, and oh god, he just wants to fuck her, he wants to plunge into her so deeply he can’t even think straight. 

Her legs have wound around his hips, but at his pleas, she releases him, letting him fumble in the drawer for a condom. He unwraps it, forcing himself to slow down and put it on properly, but he’s not helped at all by the way Rose has slipped her hand down her body, sliding her fingers in and out of herself exactly like he wants to. 

When the condom’s in place, he nearly bats her hand out of the way, taking his place back between her legs, he positions himself, and pauses, but Rose breathes out a _yes_ beneath him and then he’s pushing inside of her. 

A moment later, he’s pulling out again, but not all the way, there’s no time stream, no possibility of him pulling out fully until this is finished, he’ll sleep here if she’ll let him.

He thrusts back in once more, a rhythm he’s keeping slow only through sheer force of will, in, out, in, out, Rose’s face is twisted beneath him and he can’t understand it.

“What’s wrong?” he manages to get out, stilling himself inside of her.

“It feels…different. Doesn’t it feel different?”

He shakes his head violently, feeling his hair literally move with the action. “No, Rose, it doesn’t, it feels brilliant, god, fuck, it feels brilliant,” he repeats.

Rose looks like she doesn’t believe him, but he’s telling the truth, it feels like it always does, like wet heat and love and like he’s going to explode if he doesn’t start moving again, but he’ll stop if she wants him to, of course he’ll stop.

“Do you want to not do this now?” He presses his forehead to hers, the words muffled against her mouth.

Inside of her, he makes his cock jump. If she presses it, he’ll tell her it’s an involuntary twitch, but it’s voluntary, all of this is voluntary, and he needs her to know that.

For a long moment, she’s silent. Her eyes are closed, and he feels her chest expand below him as she takes a deep breath. 

“I want to,” she finally says. “Let’s go,” and then she’s locking him in place fully over her, the way they couldn’t do for months, especially at the end, not with her belly. 

They’re wrapped up in each other so tightly that for a moment he thinks maybe he really could just stay like this, maybe they could try again another night, but then she arches beneath him, bringing him the last inch he’d been holding out inside of her, and he’s back in it.

“God, yes, just like that,” she says when he rocks back out and pushes back in. “Keep going.”

He’s off now, rutting into her sloppily, trying to find a pace, a rhythm, anything, but all he can manage are grunts and groans and hisses, his hips pistoning completely of their own volition as he pushes his cock into her warmth over and over again. 

Oh fuck, it’s right there, he’s right there, and Rose hasn’t even started with the swear words yet, but he can’t keep it back, in, out, in, out, and suddenly he’s coming, releasing into the condom with a groan as he slams himself tightly into her, his arms curled under her back and clenched there as his orgasm sizzles through him. 

Rose rocks him through it, and it’s only a moment later when he realizes what he’s done, this was for her, this was supposed to be for her, and he’d shot off like a fucking adolescent. 

It’s horrifying.

Before he can apologize, the monitor on the table crashes to life, the sound echoing from the nursery down the hall as the baby cries out. 

He turns to Rose plaintively, expecting her to admonish him, but instead she’s laughing silently underneath him.

“You were pretty loud,” she says. “Way louder than normal. You woke her up.”

Her tone isn’t accusatory though, it’s completely delighted, and he looks at her, confused.

“It really didn’t feel any different, did it?” she says.

The baby is still wailing down the hall, and he’s trying to collect himself, pressing kisses to Rose’s neck.

“I told you it didn’t,” he breathes. 

“But you _meant_ it,” she says, arching her hips as if to prove her point, his cock slowly softening inside of her.

He finally pulls himself together enough to move off of her, wincing at the condom, and ducking into the en suite to get rid of it. “I’ll get her,” he says, tugging on his pants, “You just…keep yourself entertained,” he says, gesturing at her. 

He ducks out the door, stopping on his heel to turn back and pop his head in the door. “If prematurely ejaculating makes you feel better, Rose, I can make a habit of it.”

From the bed, she chucks a pillow at him and then flops back to the mattress as he moves to tend to their daughter.

In the nursery, it does appear that she’d just been startled awake, and a replaced dummy and a wind up of her little heartbeat teddy bear sets her to rights quickly enough. 

When he’s sure she’s settled, he fairly runs back down the hall. Rose has replaced the pillow on the bed and is lying on it, thumbing through her phone above her head, the light from the screen illuminating her face. She’d stayed naked, which was something, so he meets her eye and nods at the phone.

“Put that down,” he says, tone brooking no argument.

Rose’s eyes widen and she fumbles to place the phone on the nightstand, spreading her legs when she returns to her back. 

He parts her legs, and settles his torso between them, holding her gaze as he moves his head closer to her. “Think I was right about here when you stopped me before.” He gives her a long, slow lick, and something awful rushes over his tongue — what _is_ that?

He must’ve made a face because Rose is almost giggling above him. “How’s that lubricated condom taste working for you, Doctor?”

Oh. She’s right. 

“Just a bit of that down here,” he says with another long lick at her, grappling to retain his ground. “I’ll get back to Rose soon enough.”

He pushes his tongue inside of her, alternating between her entrance and her clit. She’s grabbing at his hair, his arm, fumbling to take his hand, and when she gets a grip on it, stretched above his head at her side, she doesn’t let go, squeezing it tightly, and he has a flash of her doing the same thing six weeks ago, in the delivery room before the epidural had kicked in. 

It’s another reminder of just what she’s done for him, for their family, and he vows to make her come hard, and soon. He flexes his hand against her own and licks at her clit. He can’t use his other hand either, his arm is helping prop him up, but he sucks at her with his mouth as skillfully as he can manage. 

A few moments more and her fingers clench around his and don’t release, a steady pulse of _fuck, god, fuck, yes_ , and he knows that’s the start of it. He presses his lips to her, tongue beating steadily against her clit, and she shouts out nothing that even resembles a word, keening above him as she comes, arching off the mattress at the hips until she’s half-sitting. 

A moment passes and then their daughter is answering the cry from down the hall, screaming through the monitor once more. He keeps his mouth pressed to Rose, ratcheting her down, and when she’s sated and boneless against the bed, he pulls back and stands. 

“No, I’ll get her,” Rose mumbles, pressing side of her face into the pillow like she’s trying to rally strength. 

“It’s fine, I’ve got her,” he says, tugging his pants up. “Go to sleep and dream that I shagged you without coming so early, and then we’ll see about that in the morning.”

Rose grumbles her half-hearted assent and twists her body until she’s under the sheets and blankets.

He calms Bird down once more without issue, though it takes a little longer this time, and when he comes back, Rose is on her side, facing the empty cot, and clearly asleep.

He crawls into bed next to her, spooning up behind her and gives the monitor once last glance. Bird is asleep, just like he’d left her a few moments ago, but it feels…well, it feels like he’s not ready for it yet, and as quietly as he can manage, he gets back out of bed. 

Lifting their daughter from her cot, he settles her on his side of the bed, propping a pillow up as a barrier, and then darts back to the nursery, untangling the monitor as quickly as he can. He takes the lot back to their bedroom and leaves the hall light on, checking on Bird one more time before he sets to reinstalling the monitor in the temporary cot.

Rose grumbles behind him as he works, but doesn’t wake, and ten minutes later — longer because he kept stopping to check on Bird in the bed — everything is sorted, and he scoops her back up, laying her down gently with a kiss to her forehead.

“I love you,” he whispers, and then turns around, kissing Rose’s forehead as well. “And I love you, too.”

He flips the hall light back off and then gets back into bed a final time, spooning up against Rose once more, and falling quickly asleep. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All done! Basically six fics over six days! Thanks to everyone who was into it!

It was supposed to be routine.

A typical Saturday morning proceeding in its typical way: hear noise, wake up, clean teeth quickly, cover the kids in a man-to-man defense, eat, dress, play, nap, adventure. 

Repeat parts as needed, find time for a shower somewhere.

The natural rhythms of their family, with very little deviation.

Sometimes they run a zone defense, stone-walling the kitchen so one of them can make a proper breakfast, and sometimes they're strong-armed into skipping naps, but it's a groove, a pattern, so ingrained that it's not until they're cleaning their teeth that Rose realizes they skipped a step.

"Are the kids awake?" she asks around a mouthful of foam, clicking her little electric ( _sonic_ ) toothbrush off so the Doctor can hear her better.

"What?" the Doctor says, his own brush still whirring away in his mouth as he stands at the sink next to hers.

Rose rolls her eyes, holding up a finger -- _one second_ \-- and then finishes on her teeth, waiting for the Doctor to do the same.

When he's done, spitting the foam and then water into the basin in a way that she knows means he's concentrating on hitting the drain like a bulls-eye, she turns to lean on the counter, her back to the mirror where the Doctor’s leaned forward, carefully inspecting his hair for gray.

(It's not there yet, not that he'll admit, but it's coming, she's confident.)

"Who got up first?" she says. "I didn't notice."

The Doctor shrugs, pulling away from the mirror, apparently satisfied enough to live another day. "Bird, probably. I'm sure I heard her earlier."

"Did you though?" she tilts her head, listening. "Because she's quiet now, and --" Rose darts back out into the bedroom, checking the monitor "-- the baby's still asleep, too."

"What, exactly, are you saying, Rose Tyler?"

Rose grins, vaulting up onto the bed like the little gymnast she was more than 20 years ago.

"I'm saying, _Doctor_ , that it's Saturday morning and we've got it all to ourselves."

He smiles gleefully at her, putting his finger to his lips and creeping exaggeratedly to their bedroom door, shutting it gently and locking it before leaping to join Rose on the bed.

She squeals when he lands half-on top of her and he shushes her, covering her mouth with his hand and pressing his forehead to hers.

"No, no, no, don't make a sound," he says, releasing her mouth and flopping on to his back. "We are going to have morning sex, or we are going to watch the cartoons _I_ want to watch. Either way, I'm dreadfully excited."

She rolls to lie across him, folding her arms on his chest and then resting her chin on her hands. "Really? I can't even beat out Bugs Bunny free and clear?"

He shakes his head solemnly. "No, it might be one of the episodes where he dresses like a girl. Those are some spectacular breasts, Rose, I'm afraid I've forgotten how yours rate."

She pulls at his face, smushing his nose, tugging his lips down in an exaggerated frown and then a wide smile, molding the skin like clay even as it bounces right back. "Oh, come off it, you saw them the night before last. It's not my fault you went to bed with a headache last night. Honestly, of all the excuses, Doctor, you couldn't be a little more creative?"

With a movement she only anticipates because it's one of his favorites, he rolls them, pinning her underneath him and then gently butting his head against her, like a cub in the zoo. "No headache now," he says, "and 36 hours without seeing your absolutely fantastic breasts is far too long. Show them to me, I need to see them right now and remember."

Rose shoves him up by the shoulders, leaning so she can grab her t-shirt and pitch it over her head before falling back to the bed. He squints at her chest discerningly, moving closer to one nipple and then the other. 

"Is this freckle new?" he asks, drawing a fingernail across it softly. 

"Nope, same as it always was, Erik down in finance paid me five quid last week to see it."

The Doctor nods. "Good, good, money's tight with the two kids now, glad to see you're doing your part."

If she lets him, they'll go back and forth like this for an hour, squandering the whole morning away — or at least this scant borrowed time — goofing off, and while she'd enjoy it, it doesn't seem like the _best_ use of this novelty. 

“What’s it gonna be, Doctor?” she says, arching her hips beneath his, noting the beginnings of an erection under his pajama bottoms. “Me or the bunny?”

He slithers down her body, resting between her legs and pulling her leggings and knickers down a few inches. “Well, you are a bit less furry than Bugs,” he says, running the palm of his hand over the hair he’s found. “But I suppose I’ll just have to make do.”

Pressing a quick kiss to her belly, he hops up to his knees and then works her bottoms and knickers off, jumping off the bed to finish the job and then hopping right back into place. 

“You gonna be _making do_ while wearing your pajamas then?” she asks, nodding at his clothes. 

“Nope,” he says, tapping her on the nose, and then he’s tugging his t-shirt off and rolling to the side of her to shimmy out of his bottoms and pants. 

When he’s done, she rolls on top of him, caging him in and looking down their bodies to where his cock is bobbing against his stomach. 

“Everything as you remember it?” he says. “You’ve gone all this time without seeing me, too.”

“Oh, yes, _all_ this time, a whole day and a half,” she says. “Look at this, you’re listing to the left now, how will I ever keep up with all these changes?”

She gently bats her hand against his cock, moving it to her left and his right, smiling as it bobs back into position.

“Ro-o-se, you know it’s always been the left,” he says. “My _last_ body, that was a righty, but you — _you_ didn’t bother getting acquainted with that one.”

In a flash, she slips down his body, mouth hovering over the tip of his erection as she kneels between his legs. “Well, let me get reacquainted with this one, then,” and she envelops him in her mouth, wasting no time in taking him as far as she can, relaxing her throat as he bumps against the back of it.

“Fuck, Rose,” he hisses, “you can’t just _do_ that.”

She pulls back, considering, and then laves a long, slow lick up the underside of his cock. “I think I just did.”

Before she can suck at him again, he’s got his hands under her arms, hauling her up. “No time for that today, we’ve got kids just waiting, _lurking_ , ready to derail this at any moment. Now I’m gonna fuck you against this wall, and when you come, you’re going to be quiet, right?”

She nods, unable to do anything else, and then he’s pulling her down to him, kissing her deeply, tongue stroking against her own as his hand works itself between their bodies to her entrance. 

He taps a light rhythm, alternating his index and middle fingers like he’s trying to decide which one to use, and then he’s plunging both of them inside of her in one strong movement. She’d been wet, but not dripping, and the motion is a surprise, her mouth stalling against his as he grins. 

Curling his fingers in and out of her, he continues to kiss her until the only sounds in the room are heavy breathing and the wet noise of him pumping into her. 

“Ready?” he breathes against her mouth. 

She nods and scampers off of him, wincing at the loss of his fingers, and then perching herself on the side of the bed while he moves to stand in front of her, in between her legs. 

At the time, it was probably embarrassing, the way they were in that furniture store, repeating this same position on mattress set after mattress set, trying to find the one most conducive to this. They’d done a good job though, and in a quick motion, he hooks his arms over her thighs, tugging her until her bum rests on the edge of the mattress and then freeing one hand to line up his erection.

When he’s got it, he slides in, Rose locking her legs around his waist as she flops back to the mattress. He runs a hand down her body, trailing across her breasts, her abdomen, and then down to her clit before he begins to move. 

He sets a lazy place, pulling nearly all the way out of her before pushing back in just as slowly, and she lets him do it for a few moments, enjoying the way he’s rubbing at her clit with one hand, tugging at a nipple with the other, but soon she’s pushing herself, rising first to her forearms and then her hands before finally winding her arms around his neck. 

He shifts his arms underneath her thighs, hands palming her arse and lower back, and when he feels like he’s got a solid grip, he presses a kiss to her mouth. “I’m good,” he says, and with that she pushes up as best she can, limbs tightening around him at the free-falling moment before he completely secures her.

They take a moment to settle like that, and then he’s spinning around rushing the few feet to the wall on her side of the bed and pushing her up against it. Just months ago, there’d been a cot in this very place, and now he’s fucking her here. There are no more kids on the way, they’ve agreed, and she takes a moment to think about the progression, the poetry of life, and then he bucks his hips into hers, and she loses her breath.

There’s absolutely no leverage for her in this position, just holding on as best she can while he ruts her into the wall, and she tries to go along with it, tries to position her body so she’s getting friction where she needs it, but it causes the Doctor’s grip to realign and he corrects it reflexively, burying his head in her neck and sucking roughly at the skin there while his hips stay still for the moment. 

They try a few more times, bumbling attempts to establish some sort of rhythm, but it’s fruitless. He pulls off the wall, bouncing her a few times on his cock while standing in the middle of the room, unsecured without the wall at her back, and she laughs at the feel.

“Show off,” she says and he grins at her, shuffling her back to the bed and depositing her in the position he’d taken her from minutes ago. 

They fall back into it quickly, and she relaxes back to rest on her forearms. It’s bright in the room, the sunlight filling the space even through the curtains, and she can see all of him like this, the muscles of his torso, the lines of his ribs, his abdominal muscles faintly defined, and she frees one arm, reaching a hand out to trace the path her eyes had taken. 

His own eyes fall closed at that, a throaty, pleased noise rushing out when she presses down harder, running her nails across his skin.

“I love watching you like this,” she says, content in the easy, slow they’re going about things, as if they don’t have obligations, don’t have an entire life waiting for them just outside their bedroom door. 

He seems to be beyond words himself, but he nods, mirroring her movements with his own hand down her body. He palms her breasts, squeezing, and pushing them together and then grinning, filthy and full of promise. 

“You gonna come on those?”

At that, he presses deep inside of her and stills, his eyes unfocusing as he clearly pictures just that. 

“Nah,” he says, and then pulls back quickly only to return a second later, and he really is so deep, this position, he’s _so_ deep, she can feel it all over her body, low in her stomach, heat pooling, and then his thumb is on her clit, rubbing tight, firm circles as his hips pick up speed.

“Yes, oh, god, yes,” she’s near pleading, but she doesn’t know for what, more somehow, deeper somehow, harder somehow, and then he’s pushing down on her stomach with the flat of his  hand, keeping her hips from arching, and the force of it, the feeling that he knows exactly what he’s doing, exactly what she needs, even when sometimes she doesn’t, it’s enough. Her legs flail bonelessly in the air, toes pointing, until she’s slapping a hand over her mouth, muffling her shout as she bits down against the skin of her palm and comes below him.

He’s frantic then, pumping in and out of her recklessly, straining to finish, and she does everything she can, her nails on his chest, her legs locking around his hips, and she’s encouraging him, _I love you_ and _I love this_ and _yes, just like that, oh, fuck, just like that_. 

His mouth snaps shut, eyes screwing closed and the muscles of his neck straining as he buries himself inside of her a final time, coming in a way she can see in his entire body in this position. It’s — it’s _gorgeous_. 

Long seconds pass, his eyes re-opening, his mouth slackening, and then he’s pulling out of her, careful of the mess. He snatches a few tissues from the box on Rose’s nightstand, cleaning her up as best he can and then urging her up the bed, turning her until she’s lying on the pillows and nudging her toward his side of the mattress while he stretches out on hers.

He flops an arm out away fro his body and she pillows her head on it, curling up on her side and peering at his profile backlit by the sun streaming in. 

Smiling at the ceiling for a moment, he turns his head to look at her, his expression working into something a bit more self-deprecating. 

“Never can get that right, can we?” he says, sheepish. “The wall?” 

Rising up, she presses a kiss to his cheek, right at the corner of his lips.

“Gives us something to work toward,” she says.

Half an hour later, Rose is sitting on the sofa nursing a cup of tea, when Bird appears in front of her, a plaster in her hand. 

“What’s this?” Rose asks. “Are you hurt?”

Bird shakes her head, pointing a finger to Rose’s neck. “For your bruise.” 

It takes a moment, but she realizes what’s there, what the mark on her neck must look like to Bird. Then’s she blushing and laughing and the Doctor winks at her from across the living room, waving the baby’s chubby little hand in the air. 

“What’s funny? Don’t you like this bear one? I have penguins, too,” Bird says. 

“No,” Rose says, taking the bandage from her daughter and pressing it to her neck. “This is perfect.”


End file.
